World’s Biggest RSS Button
If you want readers to subscribe to your RSS feed, it’s a good idea to make the subscription button (or link) prominent. It should definitely be “above the fold”, visible as soon as the page loads in the user’s browser, and visually eye-grabbing.
Taking this to an extreme, there’s a meme going around the web about the “world’s largest” or “world’s biggest” RSS button. This meme has gotten (pleasantly) silly.
I think it started when ReviewMe.com claimed to have the world’s biggest:
Not bad, right?
John Chow thought it was good, but not big enough, so he made his larger as a part of an effort to get more RSS readers:
Bill Hartzer claimed to have the world’s largest RSS button, but if you look at the source of the page, you can see it is just an orange background. Cheater! 
While investigating the meme, I encountered Malaysia’s Largest (and Ugliest) RSS button. So it is good to know that national pride is getting involved, hm?
havelaptopwilltravel.com made one that impressed me, and you can see it here.
But Doug Karr made one so large (6000×6000 pixels) that IE can’t display it. (He advises you check it out in Firefox if you’re interested)
Of course, now the silliness is really getting started, and Rex Bowden claims to have the “biggest 4″ RSS buttons.
For the record: I like the size of my own little RSS button just fine: 
You can check out the meme yourself via Google.
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November 16th, 2006 at 7:18 pm
This makes good sense: Since Firefox 2 and (unless I’m mistaken) IE7 both show their own RSS button right up there in the address bar when a feed is available, the RSS icon on the
website itself is rapidly becoming redundant.
What better time to go crazy with them?
On my browser at the moment, the address-bar button seems to be about half the size of yours, but equally effective.
Snarky question: Are any women involved in this “Mine’s bigger!” game?
November 16th, 2006 at 9:46 pm
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November 16th, 2006 at 11:53 pm
Hi Walt-
I didn’t find any women getting in this particular game, no.
[Insert snarky answer here about stereotypical differences between men and women in attitudes and behaviors relating to measurement]
-David
November 20th, 2006 at 10:20 pm
Haha this is great! Lemme go tell John real quick I’m sure he will get a good laugh from it!
November 30th, 2006 at 11:41 pm
The World’s Smallest RSS Icon!
This is my blatant attempt to get more people to subscribe to my RRS feed. With that in mind, I like to present the world’s smallest RSS button. If it was possible to make something smaller than 1×1 pixel I definitely would. Please click on the …
March 17th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
[...] I’m also guessing it’s because RSS sounds a lot snappier than Atom (or RDF). That double S is akin to the two curved lines on the feed logo. I guess nobody wants to go neutral on this one, calling the feed icon an RSS icon instead. Others, however, are more concerned with the size of the icon (it’s a contest) rather than explaining what RSS actually is. (It’s “Really Simple Syndication”, by the way.) Face it, feeds are exclusive to automated publishing platforms such as blogs. Score 11/65; Formula: Gibberish, Foreign Word (sounds like one, at least); Circle No.: 4, The Cab Calloway; Qwerky T-shirt Tagline: “Bite My Flaming Metal ASS RSS“ Tags: atom, blog, cab calloway, fedafi, feed, feedburner, foreign word, gibberish, rdf, rssRelated Posts: Mojizu, Rojo, YubNub, Ning, Meebo, Urbis, Eskwela, FAQQLY « Web 2.0 Love Letter | Home | [...]