Why is it so hard to subscribe to a blog?

So I’m reading a blog (hosted by Blogger, now owned by Google) in my browser (Chrome, built by Google) and I decide I want to subscribe to it in Google Reader (also a Google product don’t you know) and I have to scroll right down to the bottom of the page to find a button that says Subscribe and when I click it, it opens a new tab which shows me the XML of the Atom feed.

What in the hell am I supposed to do with that?

There’s an implicit assumption that non-techies don’t understand RSS (or Atom or whatever) because it’s a strange concept or hard to explain, but maybe it hasn’t taken off in the way it should because even in an environment where each part of the equation is controlled by one company the process seems designed to prevent me from subscribing.

One Response to “Why is it so hard to subscribe to a blog?”

  1. February 5th, 2011 at 3:06 pm

    It’s ridiculous that both Chrome and Firefox have dropped the famous orange icon from our toolbars.

    It’s said that adoption and useage of feeds is low, but that’s a silly excuse to cut out support for the feature! The people who do subscribe, love it. It’s not that much screen real estate in a URL bar, beside.

    In the meantime there’s this:
    https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nlbjncdgjeocebhnmkbbbdekmmmcbfjd


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