Yesterday, I brought up the question of how to go from talking about to marketing technologies like RSS and Atom to various kinds of people. It's easy enough to talk to a techie about it, but how do you convince your grandma that she should give a hoot about some newfangled computer whizbang thingy that doesn't even have a name that everybody can agree on? If we want to bring data bite feeds into the mainstream, we'll need a clear message that's easy to communicate.

So what's the message? Why should grandma care about RSS? The two concepts that come to my mind are, in word each, "easier" and "more". With newsfeeds, it's easier to get the news than with a web browser. You can also manage more information with a feed reader without getting overwhelmed. The two go hand in hand, but are useful to discuss separately. Some people may be more interested in one than the other.

If easier and more are the messages, on the one hand, we need to figure out how to communicate them. On the other hand, we need to make sure they're true! Marketing isn't just about the talk, it's also about the walk. Sure, once you've got your feed reader set up and have subscribed to twenty feeds, it's easier to read them than to visit twenty websites looking for updates. But is it easier to install a feed reader and subscribe to feeds? It's not that hard for the computer-savvy, but it could certainly be made easier.

I've noticed on some feed reader websites that it's quite difficult to figure out how to download the software. One particular reader hosted on Sourceforge took me a while to download for a few reasons: I never could find what some webpage somewhere (I think it was on the Sourceforge site) claimed was the latest version. And when I got to the download page, what looked like the download link was a link to more information about a particular release (a few of which were listed--it would be easier to have just the latest listed, with a link to older releases for anyone interested). The more information page didn't have a link to download the software, so I had to back up and look a little harder to figure out how to download. Software developers interested in reaching the masses need to remember that the masses just want a big button that says "click here to download", and they only want a button for he latest stable release.

Feed readers may provide the easiest way to follow internet information, but we need to ensure that the whole package is easy: the message is easy to understand, the tools are easy to get and configure, and the feeds are easy to subscribe to. Only then will it be easy enough for everyone.