Science Intelligence and InfoPros

Below a digest of some discussions reported in 2 blogs:

• May 2009, Rest in peace RSS: It’s time to get completely off RSS and switch to Twitter. RSS just doesn’t cut it anymore. (…) Suddenly everyone and their dog was convinced RSS was dead and we should all move on.
• In early 2011 RSS still wasn’t quite dead. (…) To me, anytime someone says a tech is dead it usually means that tech is not very interesting to discuss anymore, or isn’t seeing the most innovative companies doing new things with it.
• April 2012 – RSS still wasn’t quite dead (…) There’s a veritable explosion of companies removing RSS from their products … for whatever reason. Usually because it doesn’t directly benefit the bottom line – they prefer proprietary formats
• RSS will never die because of a simple reality: power users. (…) RSS is here to stay for at least a while longer – all those people doing most of the sharing? A lot of their stuff comes from RSS.
• Twitter is not a replacement for RSS. Not by a long shot. It’s too busy! (…) Consequently, RSS offers bigger exposure to your content.
• Twitter seems to be the place to have conversations now rather then on blogs. That’s not to say blogs don’t have a place in both finding information and having discussions, but it would appear they’re being used for more reflective posts, which individuals can comment on, rather then short conversations involving lots of individuals

Teller, Swizec. RSS will never die. Zemanta Tech blog, April 26, 2012. Available from: http://www.zemanta.com/fruitblog/rss-will-never-die/ [Accessed 4th of May 2012]

Mulla, James. The role of RSS and RSS readers. FUMSI, 30th of April 2012. Available from: http://web.fumsi.com/go/article/manage/68689 [Accessed 4th of May 2012]

Study about DTCA practices by the 10 largest Pharma:

Pharmaceutical direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) is legal only in the United States and New-Zealand(…)

It is linked with inappropriate medication use, over utilization, and increased spending on expensive branded drugs, and it may endanger public health due to promotion of potentially dangerous products. (…)

With the Internet’s rapid development, users have migrated from passive information sources, using read-only “Web 1.0” technology, to interactive, dynamic, and custom-built relationships, using “Web 2.0” technologies.

Along with this digital revolution, new potential DTCA marketing opportunities haven recently emerged that include Web 2.0 social networking sites and other interactive systems (“eDTCA 2.0”), which cross geopolitical borders.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not issued guidelines on eDTCA 2.0 marketing, nor have regulators recognized eDTCA 2.0 and its potential global spillover.

Presence is strong:

- 100% are on Facebook, have blogs and provide RSS feeds

- 80% have dedicated YouTube channels and are developing mobile applications

The point is that social media are also used by illicit drug sellers to promote online sales…

Liang, B.A. & Mackey, T.K. Prevalence and global health implications of social media in direct-to-consumer drug advertising. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2011, Vol. 13, N°3, pp. e64

http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/jmir.1775

BlogLines, one of the first Rss feeds agregator, will shut down on November 1.

The main reason: “being locked in an RSS reader makes less and less sense to people as Twitter and Facebook dominate real-time information flow“

What to say to your end-users if you recommended them to set-up their alerts in Bloglines?!
http://www.linkedin.com/groupItem?view=&gid=679065…

Bloglines Announcement: http://blog.ask.com/2010/09/bloglines-update.html?goback=.gde_67906_member_30666586

The famous Roddy MacLeod, now retired, was one of the founder of the wonderful TicTOCs, now the JISC JournalTOCs (that I already mentioned as one of the rare web 2.0 service which competes really with paid services ; see my former post).

Now, there is the first customised version of JournalTOCs for Academic Libraries, which is called WattJournals.

A great initiative for libraries…

MacLeod, Roddy. Every library should have one of those, but so far, only one does. June 6, 2010 Online:

http://roddymacleod.wordpress.com/2010/06/06/every-university…

A basic but clear review about how libraries can use RSS feeds from
major database (WoS, Scopus, PubMed, etc.).
Automatic feeds can be used:

• to highlight departmental research
• to promote publications of an organization
• to assist end-users to identify new papers indexed
• etc.

Nariani, Rajiv. RSS feeds from STM databases: innovative possibilites. Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, Spring 2010. Online:
http://www.istl.org/10-spring/tips.html

In MEDWORM, over 6000 authoritative RSS feeds go in hundreds of new RSS feeds by category come out.

MedWorm is a medical RSS feed provider as well as a search engine built on data collected from RSS feeds.

MedWorm collects updates from over 6000 authoritative data sources (growing each day) via RSS feeds. From the data collected, MedWorm provides new outgoing RSS feeds on various medical categories that you can subscribe to, via the free MedWorm online service, or another RSS reader of your choice, such as Bloglines, Newsgator, Google Reader or FeedDemon.

The best way to get a feel for the information that MedWorm can provide is to have a browse through the various categories on the menu (homepage).

http://www.medworm.com/

Roddy MacLeod, from the Herriot-Watt University Library staff and one of the editors of the famous Internet Resource Newsletter, gives a very nice list of 10 websites that you must know if you have the hope to stay up-to-date with your journals…

It includes SciFeeds, TicTOCs, etc that I’ve already mentioned here.

Of course, only the “less than 5%” of the Scientific community around the globe who use RSS feeds, will delight this list!!!

Click here

This is one of the conclusion of the Watson Wyatt’s 2009 HR Technology Trends Survey:

Only 23% of surveyed companies have deployed Social networking and 14% hve planned to do for the next 24 months… 21% use blogs and 13% plan to use them soon… Only 8% of companies use RSS feeds…

A very low adoption…

http://www.watsonwyatt.com/us/news/press.asp?ID=21238

I read somewhere (I will try to check that ASAP) that the rate of RSS feeds adoption by Companies is less than 10%.

Mike Gotta has found out Ten reasons why “RSS enterprise” has failed to become Mainstream: http://mikeg.typepad.com/perceptions/2009/01/ten-reasons-why-enterprise-rss-has-failed-to-become-mainstream.html

These 10 reasons are mainly technical or usability issues or linked to employees education.

As Info Pro, and seeing my end-users also not really enthusiastics by RSS feeds installed for instance into our SharePoint intranet, I would say that RSS feeds are not seen as a relevant tool to be informed in due time. To keep up to date with collected information, most of Scientists seem to prefer receiving basics emails (despite they complain everyday to be overloaded!): probably because they are afraid to miss some critical data… RSS feeds as a Push system are not applicable to a Business critical informations surveillance (Watch), the risk is too high to miss some information because you forgot to have a look during 1 week at your customized page…

•          Subscribe to 20 different search engine feeds (Google news, Technorati, Delicious, etc.) using your keywords

•          Then, import the OPML file into your RSS reader

http://alp-uckan.net/free/monitorthis

My Opinion: can be useful for an environmental watching. Requires to manage well RSS readers