Software programs called RSS readers creating a blog jam
Seattle Times — “The uptick in visits is a side effect of RSS readers, a familiar technology in the world of blogs, but one that is just starting to catch on with mainstream Web users. And some experts say that Web sites may not be prepared to handle the massive amount of traffic the readers are expected to generate as they become more popular.”
Several thoughts. First, this will drive bandwidth and storage issues. RSS greatly increases traffic. Second, what is the impact on users? What are the user benefits of RSS? (I’ll need to write up my answers in an article.) Third, RSS will make page views and traffic far less relevant. RSS is a big shift.
September 21st, 2004 at 11:40 am
For an alternative view, see Photo Matt: RSS Bandwidth Usage. Since his HTML and RSS feeds are on different virtual hosts, separating the traffic stats was easy. He found that the heavier weight of HTML, combined with CSS, images, JS, etc. ended up using 33 times as much bandwidth as his RSS feeds — even though the RSS feeds were requested 3 times as often!
1/30 of the bandwidth for 3 times the traffic? Sounds OK to me.
September 21st, 2004 at 12:14 pm
Interesting that the “bigger, more important” news sources (e.g., see eWeek article on this topic) throw the grenades but the “smaller, less important” sources — like bloggers — catch the grenades with pillows and defuse them.