Multiple feed formats
Scoble just posted a link to TechBlog: What's wrong with RSS?
Here is what's so ironic about this post and its title. Having read a few of Dwight's previous posts on Start.com, Microsoft and RSS, I found his blog interesting enough to subscribe to it. So, I clicked my "Subscribe in Bloglines" toolbar button.
I was presented with three different feed formats. One with an xml extension, one with an rdf extension, and one called atom.xml. This isn't the first time this has happened to me, so I wasn't entirely surprised. I usually just randomly pick one and continue on with my day (although I shouldn't have to pick!)
Here is where it gets interesting though. The one I picked only offered partial content in the feed, so I quickly unsubscribed. It took me to two more tries to get the feed with full content.
Once I finally did, I took a glimpse up at the subscriber # in Bloglines. 42 people have subscribed to the feed with partial content, and only 21 have figured out how to get the feed with actual value. Which means there are twice as many people who failed at this task (unless they are actually interested in only reading two sentences at a time for some reason...)
Forget the naming nonsense, this is exactly what is "wrong with RSS". 4 minutes of my lunch time completely wasted just trying to subscribe to a feed.