Will RSS feeds overload the ‘net?
Wired News has a short article about RSS feed readers and the potential they have for increasing web traffic. I knew about this article because it was listed in the RSS feed that I get from Wired. Go figure. Anyway, the author and others are concerned that because aggregators are becoming more and more popular among those who like to read regularly published electronic content, eventually a large chunk of web traffic will consists of desktop aggregators regularly downloading that data throughout the day.
The trouble is, aggregators are greedy. They constantly check websites that use RSS, always searching for new content. Whereas a human reader may scan headlines on The New York Times website once a day, aggregators check the site hourly or even more frequently.
If all RSS fans used a central server to gather their feeds (such as Bloglines or Shrook), then there wouldn’t be as much traffic, because these services check feeds once per hour at most, regardless of the number of subscribers. So, if you have 100 people subscribed to your feed, rather than getting 100 hits every hour (or some other frequency), you would only get one. The article notes two difficulties with this scenario. First, a lot of RSS fans prefer their desktop aggregators to a web-based aggregator such as Bloglines. Second, the Shrook aggregator is not free, and probably that will be the model that its competitors will take.
I don’t completely agree with the premise that having a central server distributing content to feed subscribers will reduce the flow of traffic on the ‘net anymore than it currently is. Whether my aggregator checks my feeds once an hour or whether Bloglines does it for me, I still use up bandwidth when I log in and read the content on the Bloglines site. For some feeds, if I want to read the whole entry or article, I still have to click to the site. Frankly, I think the problem has more to do with aggregators that “are not complying with specifications that reduce how often large files are requested.”
Readers are supposed to check if the RSS file has been updated since the last visit. If there has been no update, the website returns a very small “no” message to the reader.
But Murphy says the programs often don’t remember when they last checked, or use the local computer’s clock instead of the website’s clock, causing the reader to download entries over and over.
Perhaps the best thing for us to do is to educate ourselves about which RSS aggregator we use and how it may affect the bandwidth of the feeds we download through it.
![](http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/living/people/8583153.htm">feature article</a> today about the resurgence of interest in shape note thanks to the move Cold Mountain. The article briefly describes shape note and it’s popularity in modern society. I used to sing regularly with both the <a href="http://cs.engr.uky.edu/~raphael/fasola.html">Appalachian Association of Sacred Harp Singers</a>, and a group that meets weekly in Berea. This year I’ve gotten very busy, and it’s been easy to choose not to make the drive to these locations on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I should try to get to the big singing this Saturday, though.</p>
<p><img decoding="async" src="http://cs.engr.uky.edu/~raphael/fasola.2001.12.jpeg" alt="picture taken December, 2001 at a joint singing with the Berea Shape Note group at Mt. Zion United Methodist Church in Mercer County, Kentucky." width="497" height="218"></p>
<p><i>I’m in the front row wearing a dark shirt with a white turtle neck.</i></p>
<p><b>update (5/10/04):</b> I went for the last two hours of the singing. I don’t have enough stamina for a whole day, and I figured they could use my voice more then, when everyone else is getting tired. We had plenty of singers to make it sound good, and quite a few visitors sitting on the edges of the square and listening. Most of the visitors came because of the newspaper article and the movie <i>Cold Mountain</i>, but surprisingly enough, there were a handfull of singers there because of the newspaper article, too. We sang both songs from the movie soundtrack (<a href="http://www.fasola.org/index/L/282.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">I’m Going Home</a> and <a href="http://www.fasola.org/index/L/047b.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Idumea</a>), as well as a number of favorites. There were quite a few songs that I wasn’t familiar with, but thankfully others in my section knew them. We sang my favorite page-turner, <a href="http://www.fasola.org/index/L/254.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Rose of Sharon</a>, too. I even led two songs, <a href="http://www.fasola.org/index/L/497.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Natick</a> and <a href="http://www.fasola.org/index/L/334.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Oh Come Away</a>.</p>
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