Remember Push technology? I can recall a tonne of articles in our papers how push technology would be the Next Big Thing, but it was always a little vague as to how it would work. From memory, it was described as information you want comes to you, rather than you going and finding it.
The term seemed to die a quick death and I haven’t heard anyone using it for a long time. But reading articles on the term remind me so much of the latest new(ish) trend of subscribing to feeds.
Wikipedia’s entry says:
…a client computer such as a desktop home user would subscribe to various information topics provided by a content provider and as that content is created by the content provider, such information is “pushed” or delivered across the internet to the desktop home user and displayed on that users computer.
The technology first gained popularity in the 1990s using PointCast software. It got a lot of media attention and both Netscape and Microsoft integrated it heavily into their software at the height of the browser wars. However, most people didn’t find push technology useful, and it later faded into more obscure corners of software packages.
Did push technology just shed its name and become reinvented as feeds? I wonder.
Why did push technology fail? Why didn’t people find it useful?
In another article, the flaws of push technology were said to be the difficulty in filtering content to your requirements.
As I subscribe to more and more feeds, I’m wishing I could filter out feed items based on certain key words. I recently discovered FeedShake which does this (do any feedreaders have this functionality inbuilt?). Handy when there’s just too many items to keep up with in a feed. Darren has a good discussion on if bloggers are posting too much in response to Seth’s post entitled “The noisy tragedy of the blog commons”.
As more and more feeds become available, instead of saving us time keeping track of those sites we may lose time with information overload. Memetrackers may help – but I suspect it’s not going to be enough of a solution in and of itself.
The article on push technology from 2000 warned that users may end up with “large quantities of information that must still be reevaluated and digested by the user to determine its true relevance”. So familiar.
As I write this, I’ve discovered a story which connects the dots between push technology and RSS. It explains that while millions downloaded the Pointcast software, it causes network havoc (hmm, RSS requests on the hour crashing servers sounds vaguely familiar) and, interestingly, “boredom set in”. Will people tire of feeds? Will people find it just too much to keep on top of tracking too many sites?
PS It’s funny to read Jeffrey Veen’s push article from 1998:
Listen closely, kids, and I’ll fill you in on the next big thing: Web pages that come to you. That’s right, instead of aimlessly wandering the Net, searching for pages of interest, you’ll get them delivered to you. Just sit back and watch the content stream in. It solves a lot of problems for users – like keeping track of all your favorite sites and remembering to visit them.
Just some thoughts I had while reminscing.
your thoughts
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Antony
Rachel,
These points are all very well taken, but there is a difference.
When “information” (a word I hate, because it’s meaningless without context) becomes too much to evaluate, you start making decisions about which item to read not based on “what”, but “who.” With blogs, there’s a definite “who” — and I rely on the people I like reading to make the “what” decisions for me.
The problem with Pointcast is that there never was a “who”, only a “what” — it’s very difficult for a corporation to have a personal identity, it’s difficult to get a person to trust a company.
But I’ll read your blog no matter “what” you’re talking about, because I know that you’re an interesting woman with something to say.
It’s not really a question of “push” or “pull”, it’s a question of who you can trust with your time.
Rachel
Perhaps that’s where we differ when subscribing to feeds Antony.
I subscribe to a lot of blogs where I’m not interested in reading all their posts (there’s too many) – I want to filter based on my interests. Some feeds just have too many items coming in on them and I’d like my feedreader to allow me to be smarter in what I read on these feeds.
Rachel
PS – Re-reading your comment, I see your point and that works for many blogs but not necessarily all feeds.
Chrono Cr@cker
Good post Rachel, I read a blog post for more than one time after a long long time. LOL!
Anyways, I had written a couple of posts on this if you are interested.
The Perfect RSS Reader
An RSS Alternative to Bloglines
RSS is the past, present and future! Without doubt, I will proclaim that they are going to last forever until I dunno Web 3.0 which will show a much evolved form of RSS. :p