"Getting" RSS... and why good writing still matters

RSS as you recall is the new way of publishing AND receiving information online... WITHOUT using email. That's my dumbed down explanation that seems to work for most folks. And it works for me. But until recently, I confess, I haven't really "gotten" why RSS is so significant as a new technology.

Lemme take a stab:

Advantages of using a Web-based newsreader

If you subscribe to RSS feeds via a Web-based newsreader or news aggregator like Bloglines, you've created an entirely portable information center for yourself. You don't need to be tethered to any one computer. I call it Taking Back the Web.

RSS puts you (customer, consumer, information-seeker) back in the driver's seat when it comes to wading through the online jungle.

Here's how to do it:

Set up your free Bloglines account and start adding all the blog (and news) feeds you want to follow. Over time, you may find you want to subscribe to hundreds of RSS feeds. Or, in the case of Microsoft's Robert Scoble, thousands.

Here's Scoble's trick...  When you go to your Bloglines page, you only need to check the newly-updated feeds. So, as Robert told us last week at the Blog Business Summit, when he checks Bloglines he only reads "the several hundred who have posted something new overnight." (That's a quote from his presentation.)

If you're a new navigator-of-the-Web via RSS, that may translate into a half dozen updated feeds to check. (You just click on the headline links and/or read the summaries which you'll see through your Bloglines account.)

Syndicating your news & updates with RSS

I make no apologies, BTW. I write for the non-cool marketer & exec, the kind of person who is so busy doing actual work (as opposed to blogging) he or she may not be up on the latest technology buzz.  So if all this stuff is totally obvious to you then stop reading. But if it's helpful...

I finally got my Feedburner account up and running properly today. If you click the RSS button to the left you'll see how it works. Takes you directly to a page where you can quickly subscribe to this blog via RSS. Or learn how to do it if you haven't chosen a favorite news reader yet.

Feedburner also has a cool tool called a Headline animator. I set it up on my home page at WordBiz.com. And I'm also inserting it here...

Cool. Looks like it works.

This is what RSS syndication is. And note that the headline or "title" of each post (what you see above) is what's visible. So, take care with how you title your blog posts. Because that's all that many people may read. Make your titles descriptive and specific enough that they tell a little story in and of themselves.

OK, that's enough light-bulb moments for today.
 

Comments

[Bill French]

Debbie:

>>> the kind of person who is so busy doing actual work <<<

And this is precisely why RSS is being adopted so quickly - people don't have time to surf and determine (on their own) what's new. RSS is a time-manufacturing tool. It makes it possible to be aware of more information in less time and without spending human cycles to identify precisely what is new vs what has been read before.

A properly designed RSS integration with web content will produce feeds about pages that have changed or are new. Unfortunately there are lots of RSS feeds that are just rehashes of old (sometimes stale) content. These feeds are not as valuable as feeds that truly represent the delta between yesterday's content and todays. Like all content systems, RSS quality is just as important as HTML quality.

People that truly "get" RSS, see it as a productivity tool; a "machine" that works on their behalf to eliminate the need to visit sites to see *if* anything is new. Feeds that are of low quality will be passed over for feeds that deliver on this most fundamental benefit - knowledge about content that has changed.

--bf

[Nichelle]

I use feedburner on my blog as well. I listen to a little bit of your talk today at lunch. My friends are now asking me to help them set up a blog. It's great.