RSS, Function or Fashion?

To me, Real Simple Syndication, otherwise known as RSS, means user-friendly convenience- Convenience to those that have an abundance of websites that they want to keep track of. RSS feeds simply let you know when a particular site has had an update so you can check it out rather than going through your entire list of sites to see which ones have changed. Therefore this function seems only practical when one follows a plethora of sites with diligence.

I never used an RSS feed until now because I do not diligently follow very many sites. My internet time is normally used to pass time or for entertainment. But now that I'm thinking in terms of academia and new media, I can see some potential in RSS.

I can't imagine RSS working in a classroom environment unless it went hand in hand with student interaction involving giving one another comments and feedback. There should be some incentive for students to look at each other's blogs because the internet is one mighty distraction highway. That said, I think RSS would only work in a small group environment where one could keep track of updates without being overwhelmed by too many of them. I think I have a pessimistic mindset in terms of the attention spans of students, eegads. Having RSS work in a small group setting seems counterintuitive of the prolific way RSS offers to consume content on a large scale, but I think it would be more conducive in a learning environment and not a personal one, you know, keeping track of the next Woot items and such.

There's an interesting article on TechCrunchIT about the death of RSS with Twitter becoming it's replacement. It sort of relates to the idea of RSS being useful only for those that routinely follow certain sites. Well what about finding new sites? The post talks about how RSS was once very useful and important but is now dated by not just Twitter, for new content, but Facebook for upcoming events and social networking. Since I'm a novice at this reader thing, I'll question how big a role RSS played with social networking. I'm sure it did or does for some.