In the business community, one common complaint is that there are simply too many Web sites and blogs to keep track of. True enough. Even though we have a wealth of valuable industry information at our fingertips, clicking on 20 to 30 sites and sifting through them for new content could take hours that business people simply do not have.

However, by using RSS feeds and a newsreader like Bloglines, those news-gathering hours can be reduced to minutes.

RSS feeds allow the reader to subscribe to blogs (and regular Web site pages that offer feeds) they want to follow. Whenever new material is posted, the subscriber receives it without ever having to visit the blog.

New material can be delivered to an e-mail address or to a newsreader. The advantage of a newsreader is that all subscriptions are consolidated in one place for easy–and fast–viewing.

There seems to be little middle ground with RSS and newsreaders. Business people either don’t understand it, or they have accumulated more subscriptions than they can handle. ( Amit Agarwal offers a few handy tips for those suffering from RSS overload.)

I’m not sure why mainstream adaption of RSS is proceeding so slowly–any thoughts? Depending on how a blog’s feed is set up, ordering a new subscription can be somewhat confusing for the reader. But the convenience seems more than worth the effort.

PS. While going through my subscriptions just now, I coincidentally found this post on RSS from Business and Blogging that expands on a couple of my points and offers other very helpful information. Talk about news delivered fast and easy!