One of our current hobbyhorses is the terminology that’s used to describe RSS feeds – specifically, the fact that the term ‘RSS feed’ is used to describe them. While it’s a fine TLA, it’s not something that’s particularly PHB-friendly – and these days it’s PHB’s that need educating about RSS and what it can do.
The phrase we’ve been using for a while is ‘webfeed’, and it’s good to see that no less an organisation than The Guardian agrees with us – having revamped their layout recently, this page now displays the term in a snazzy link button. It’s a real improvement on the current ‘industry standard’ orange XML button, and one that we will be shamelessly copying…
[Update: Amy Gahran of Contentious is claiming authorship of the term 'webfeed' (perhaps a contentious claim in itself? 
) and is tracking the adoption of the term. It's becoming more popular according to her figures, so perhaps we can look forward to a slightly-less jargon-filled future...?]
[Update2: I mistakenly attributed authorship of 'webfeed' to Amy Grahan - the term was actually selected by a panel from options suggested by her readers, and may well pre-date this as well. So she's the webfeed maven rather than the originator of the idea itself. But no matter, it's still a great term...]
What timing! Check out my update today on the proliferation of the nickname “webfeed”
http://blog.contentious.com/archives/2004/10/03/webfeed-proliferation
- Amy Gahran
Editor, CONTENTIOUS
Hey, just a minor correction — I’m not “claiming authorship” of the nickname webfeed. I held a contest to see what term people might prefer, and “webfeed” was selected by a panel of judges. so I started using it, and I’ve been tracking how it’s been proliferating. But years before I did that, Moreover Technologies used “webfeed” as the name for their free headline aggregation service (which, I believe, was RSS-based, something I’ve openly acknowledged).
Just to be clear on that point
- Amy Gahran