What
Is RSS and Why Should You Care?
By
Debbie Weil
 You
may be noticing more and more little orange RSS icons on Web sites and most blogs.
Here’s a quick primer to RSS: what it is and why you need to know about
it. What
RSS stands for
RSS variously stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary.
The former is the more commonly accepted phrase. It also helps to explain what
RSS is. What
RSS does
RSS is a new way to both distribute and receive content
online without using email. Publishers use RSS to distribute a “news feed”
to readers. Readers subscribe to an RSS feed via a newsreader or news aggregator.
(If you want to get techie about it, RSS is based on XML, a standard
for exchanging information between Internet applications.) Why
you need a "newsreader"
A newsreader is a little piece
of software (it can also be an online service) that is downloaded to your desktop.
It delivers a headline, short summary and a link back to the full text every time
an RSS news feed is updated. News
sites such as Yahoo! And CNET have been publishing RSS feeds for quite a while.
More recently, the RSS buzz is about blogs.
Most blog software automatically
includes an RSS feed. If you subscribe to a blog via RSS, you are alerted every
time the blog is updated. Biggest
plus: no email is involved
The beauty of the RSS format is that
no email is involved as the delivery mechanism. So no overflowing inboxes or spam
filters to block your e-newsletter if you're a publisher.
The downside
for publishers, however, is that you don't know much if anything about subscribers
to your news feed or blog. Your readers don't need to give you an email address
in order to subscribe. That’s a plus, of course, for those concerned about
privacy.
(Caveat: FeedBurner
is a Web-based service in beta that enables you to get stats about your blog traffic.)
In
a nutshell, what the fuss is about...
So why the excitement?
In a nutshell: - RSS
circumvents spam filters & email overload.
- You
no longer have to actively visit a long list of Web sites (or blogs) for information
on specific topics or industry verticals. It comes to you automatically via the
RSS feeds you've chosen.
-
Publishers can be sure that their blog or news updates are being successfully
“pushed” to interested subscribers without being siphoned off into
email junk folders.
- Some
advertisers are looking to RSS as a new way to push their messages to a targeted
audience. It remains to be seen whether blog publishers will accept this. Blogging
purists are already saying "no" to advertising within the editorial
environment of a blog.
Bottom
line... We're still in the early-adopter phase when it comes to syndicating content
via RSS. But it's catching on faster and faster – just as blogs are becoming
more and more accepted as an online communications tool. Stay tuned.
...
And if you want to cut your learning curve in half, check out our Business
Blogging Starter Kit report at www.BloggingStarterKit.com.
Below
is a sampling of the kinds of useful resources included in the Business Blogging
Starter Kit:
RSS
Newsreaders (selected list)
NewsGator
http://www.NewsGator.com
(Highly recommended. Integrates seamlessly with Outlook - DW)
FeedDemon
http://www.feeddemon.com/feeddemon/index.asp
Feedreader (free)
http://www.feedreader.com
Pluck (free)
http://www.pluck.com
BlogExpress (free)
http://www.usablelabs.com/productBlogExpress.html/
NetNewsWire (for Mac)
http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/
Bloglines (Web-based)
http://www.bloglines.com
This article was first published in the Sept. 30,
2004 issue of WordBiz Report. | 
