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Why Is Blogger.com Hiding the RSS? Let it Out!

Under the powerful Google umbrella, Blogger.com is a huge player in the blog-verse offering totally free, hosted blogs, and they are now even looking less cheesy than a few years back.

But for being the heavy weight, they are keeping RSS Feeds a hidden gem only known to those that care to put on their geek headlamps and peer inside the cave. What do I mean?

By default, all Blogger blogs automatically generate RSS. You do not even know it is happening. But here is the kicker... the default publishing templates all lack the tiny bit of HTML that would make them visible. The templates lack a link to the RSS Feeds that are published anyhow.

Thousands of Feeds lie there totally alone, shivering in the cold.

For example, Stephen Downes recently noted today Scot Aldred's new e-learning blog. Dude, where's my feed? It is not to be linked anywhere because of this ommission in their template.

But here is the secret trick-- just tack on atom.xml to any Blogger hosted site, and you get the feed.

So while Scot's blog sits visibly at http://e-learning-engagement.blogspot.com/, you can get the feed at http://e-learning-engagement.blogspot.com/atom.xml! They even render the XML so it is screen readable, rather than the typical stream of ugly XML code.

Why is this happening? Is RSS that scary? Is it being kept only for the chosen few who know where to look? Why is Blogger hiding the Feeds? Perspiring minds want to know!

Blogger, let the Feeds out!