A number of recent posts have been talking about the stalling of the RSS momentun and the possible tipping point. I have talked about this quite a bit, and hopefully this will be my last post on the issue for a while.

Look at the quote from Dave Winer that Morgan referenced when talking about the adoption of RSS by the general public:

"We are still waiting for the killer app though. We are still waiting for someone to produce the software that will switch the lightbulb on for people."

It could be that news providers are in the best position to produce that "killer app" for people. They have a chance of understanding news, but technology companies do not, says Mr Winer.

Like Dave, I think the tipping point will be caused by the integration of newsreaders by the web sites of traditional newspapers. Wired had an article last week on this subject.

Although this will not be the perfect solution, it will be the one that the public will be expsoed to. Here is part of what I wrote earlier this year on this subject:

Newspapers are realizing that users are going elsewhere for news and the standard AP feed of 'other news' is not cutting it. So why not get in early, and once again attempt to control the eyeballs.

I don't see many of the early adopters using the LA Times or any other papers' RSS reader, we'll stick with our NetNewsWire or Bloglines. But we're not who the papers are after, they want the other 97% of net users. For many net users their first introduction to RSS will be via a newspapers 'new subscription service' (RSS to the rest of us). I assume that many of the papers will make some mention of RSS, but for the most part they will come up with a catchy name for their news readers. Users will not even know they are using RSS. Ask a tech novice what ISP they use and you may get a blank stare, ask them what online service they use and you'll get an answer.

The term RSS might never be known to the general public. It might become another 'tech thing' like 'http' or 'voip'. It will be just another tech acronym that means something, but they're not sure what.

While all the early adopters will cringe when we see the clunky tools offered to the masses, the newspapers might be laughing all the way to the bank. Remember VCRplus? Any tech geek that had no problem programming their VCR looked at this product and laughed. Well they sold millions of them.

This is what Doc Searls had to say:

I think news-org aggregators will succeed if they're run by editorial people, not by advertising people. Readers come to papers for editorial, not advertising. And the editorial folks could add enormous, and unique, value to the news stream that flows in from the blogosphere. On the other hand, if these aggregators are more about capturing eyeballs than about informing readers, they'll fail, just like all those doomed projects Josh remembers from back in the '90s

Well said, if the emphasis is editorial it might have a chance of working. A key issue is how the suggested feeds are presented. Unfortunately I see a list of RSS feeds titled, "News from our Sponsors" or "Featured Partners." Will the editorial side of the paper be strong enough to list 'Alternative Views on this Issue'?

What is exciting is that we get to see all this play out over the next few months and perhaps provide some feedback. If poorly implemented will newspapers listen to criticism from the blogosphere to change some features of their services? We'll see.