I think RSS reading is a tool for pros. It's not for those who just visit a handful of websites every day, it's for those who are interested in many many more,

I think RSS reading is a tool for pros. It's not for those who just visit a handful of websites every day, it's for those who are interested in many many more, and who want to automate the task of finding out what websites have been updated; not an everyman a tool, it's one for advanced users. It doesn't matter how simple RSS useage is made, if you don't find the job of checking your sites for updates tedious and laborious you're not going to need an RSS reader. I agree with most of your post, but I think this is somewhat off. It's less to do with pro/casual than the style of content consumption. Say Mrs Housewife usually just browses the front page of Yahoo. She doesn't need an RSS feed for that; she's fine with missing items. In fact, keeping up with all the content would probably be tiring. But then her friend Mrs Awesomecook starts a great blog sharing her recipes. Mrs Housewife wants to try each one, but Mrs Awesomecook only seems to update once or twice every week. This is when you want RSS. She wants to see every single item, but checking the site can become a chore. It's annoying to check this and her other friends' blogs when there's nothing new, but she also wants to see all of the new stuff and in a timely manner. By subscribing to an RSS feed, she can make this easier. I think part of the problem is that Mrs Housewife has no idea what an RSS feed or reader is, much less what it's useful for. Furthermore, to learn a new technology like that, she'd have to see a benefit worth taking the trouble for, which usually has to be pretty high for non-technical users. Edit: And apologies if my examples seem prejudiced/sexist, it was just the first thing that came to mind since it's somewhat similar to why I taught my mom to use Google Reader (which she now loves).