+1 from me. This should definitely be something we use in DiSo.

Gives me pause, too, about switching the iterasi blog to Wordpress.

We'll monitor it, for sure. What I don't like is that it seems* that the "Follow this blog" link is hardcoded to use Google Reader. I'd prefer a more flexible and standards compliant approach. UJS could be used to intercept feed link clicks and give people the option of following in Google Reader or following in their system's default feed reader.

But the "Follow" language is worth considering. I imagine there was some sort of usability testing behind it that found it more approachable than "Subscribe."

*Haven't seen it in action yet, this is just what I've gathered from their screenshots.

I made a change similar to this on my blog, but with different wording:

"Get Updates by RSS"
and
"Get Updates by Email"

Two sides of the same coin, but it appears to be increasing my RSS subscribers since I made the change.

User: "...OK now what?"
Tech: "Just press any key and you're done."
User: "I don't see an 'any' key. Where is it?"

...sure that person will jump all over RSS re-named "follow".

1. use rel-follow (not a great convention, but something along those lines) to suggest a "followable" link... it could add the blog to Google Reader if you're a GR user (I imagine this would be the default for Blogger members) or you could change it to launch a local application or your own external blog aggregator.
2. In the case of DiSo endpoints, I believe we'll have some kind of callback mechanism that is advertised on your identity provider/data broker that expresses where you maintain your followed sites/contacts/friends. For example, when sign in to Blogger with your OpenID, your follower list would be advertised as a service in your XRDS-Simple (Discovery) profile... If you click a "follow" link, Blogger would send and OAuth request back to your identity provider requesting permission to add the feed to your followed list; should you grant the OAuth token, you'll now be subscribed to updates from that person/blog.

I

If you give someone a choice or RSS readers... what happens if they don't have one? Right... they close the page. Too much overhead. Remember the call to action was not "Hey, figure out what RSS reader you want, then create an account with it and then come back here and hit Subscribe..." The call to action was "Follow... " The verbiage has never been the issue, it's been the chain of actions required to actually follow the feed for first time subscribers.

Oh and

"In the case of DiSo endpoints, I believe we'll have some kind of callback mechanism that is advertised on your identity provider/data broker that expresses where you maintain your followed sites/contacts/friends. For example, when sign in to Blogger with your OpenID, your follower list would be advertised as a service in your XRDS-Simple (Discovery) profile..."

That would be why we're still challenged. I get that it's not an explanation meant for the public at large... but jeez, man, could you make the process a wee bit MORE intimidating?

WE continually ignore the fact that most people are not into managing social graphs etc. No one, NO ONE adopts RSS. They take actions like following blogs. The tech industry makes this mistake over and over again... you have to explain why people should care about something in terms that relate to what they want to do. People take about the widespread adoption of HTML... but HTML wasn't adopted by the public, the ability to see information in a browser was. Same with RSS... none of my friends care about the protocol whatsoever. They see a way to keep up with a lot of blogs in a streamlined way. If they care about that and if the process of doing it is low friction they'll subscribe to or follow a feed. If it's not, the underlying technical details won't matter to them.

At Mefeedia, we have received lots of feedback from "mainstream users" that "Subscribe" is confusing. It makes people think that they have to pay for subscribing to a video feed - believe me, it is one of the most common emails we receive (asking if the subscribe service is free)! May "follow" Google's lead...:)

RSS is such a huge part of my everyday life I cannot live without it.

Its great to see one of the big boys helping push it into the mainstream.

"I watched a great short video the other day explaining RSS in plain English and pictures - by the guys over at CommonCraft. The "What is RSS?" link should link to that. "

Nothing new needed. No new syntax or codez or standards, just the new (and awesome) UI concept. Browsers (all major ones anyway) already handle feeds sanely, and present you with subscribe options and a (better all the time) UI on seeing one. Just make the follow link go to the RSS feed and use the same rel=alternate type=application/rss+xml we do today.

In any case, I think if something would help promote the whole subscription / RSS system, it'd be if Facebook supported it out of the box. The easier it is for someone to "follow" our sites and have that content appear in their stream in Facebook, the better. Friendfeed isn't going to be it, I'm afraid, it's a power-user only club.

"With a click on the Followers icon, you can browse your followers, see what blogs they write, and read the other blogs they’re following. Now that you know who your Followers are, you can show them off by adding the Followers gadget to your blog’s sidebar."

So suddenly, what blogs I'm reading is public information? Looks as if there's a lot more than just a "simple name change" going on here.