Amy Gahran, publisher of CONTENTIOUS (all caps) thinks RSS is confusing because of the acronym. So she is running a “contest” aimed to “rename” RSS (this dog thinks the cat, er, meme, is out of the bag).
So here is the update on the “front-runners”, and judge for yourself how much the label affects the intuitivity of using RSS:
1. Grapevine
2. Feed
3. efeed
4. newsFeed
5. SiteFeed
6. WebFeed
7. DeskFeed
8. Elert
9. Flashfeed
10. Really Simple Sharing
11. Relay
12. Snipple
13. WebWire
14. Webstract
So catch the latest news on Amy’s Grapevine! Works great, eh? Soon she will change her e-mail tagline to read:
GET ANNOUNCEMENTS BY GRAPEVINE! If you prefer to read about new CONTENTIOUS postings in your Grapevine reader, rather than by e-mail, subscribe to my Grapevine in your grapevine reader: http://blog.contentious.com/index.rdf
Much more clear to the newbies!
About the only thing going for it is a catchy theme song.
I think it’s silly. People aren’t that stupid. I mean, they had no problem with more difficult concepts, such as frequency modulation (FM) and limited amplitude simulated emission of radiation (LASER). If anything, the new name will confuse things. Especially is a name such as ‘grapevine’ is chosen, which is really misleading.
It is extremely silly, but good targets for lobbing blog bombs 😉
In addition to FM and laser, there is also zip code, scuba, radar, sonar, snafu, which have molded into english words from a start as an acronym.
Let ’em choose “snipple”, who caras? It will never get adopted.