What is RSS?
RSS stands for 'Really Simple Syndication' and is a dialect of XML created to allow lists of information, known as 'feeds', to be published by content producers and subscribed to by readers. Originated by Netscape in the late 1990s, RSS works by taking key bits of websites, such as headlines, and distributing that information out a bare form, stripped of all fancy graphics and layouts. This information could then be incorporated easily into other websites along with a link back to the original site.
To see what the Central Ranges Community Broadband XML RSS feed looks like click here. To see that same page incorporated into an HTML webpage click here.
The symbol used to represent the 'feed' is this -
RSS is used extensively to syndicate Web content such as Weblogs and news headlines, but it can easily be applied to other types of content. RSS can be used to replace email distributions or as an alternative newsletter format.
Fortunately, most users will have no need to know how an RSS feed works since the 'feed' is meant to be read by other computer programs that convert 'the feed' into a more user-friendly display format.
Because the RSS tags are standardized, they can be read, interpreted, and displayed in any format or device that is programmed to interpret RSS, including cell phones, PDAs, and other non-computer devices.
Why is RSS Important?
RSS is today one of the most talked about technology developments affecting the Internet. While it has been around and in use by webloggers since 1999, RSS has only recently attracted mainstream attention. And with that attention has come exponential growth. It is now impossible to keep track of all the organizations deploying RSS, but here is a short list giving a flaver of the coming ubiquitous character of RSS information feeds:
- Apple Computer
- BBC World News
- Education Network Australia [EdNa]
- Central Ranges Local Learning and Employment Network
- Reuters
- Yahoo News
- The Australian Newspaper
For information publishers, RSS is an extremely efficient way to syndicate content. For web browsers, RSS is a way to regain control of their online experience. In addition to the benefits and time savings of having content delivered to the reader as it is updated, users can better focus on the content by avoiding distractions such as pop-up advertisements and email spam. Below are excerpts from recent press and industry articles discussing RSS. Even from the titles, one can quickly understand why RSS is important.
How You Can Use RSS?
Content Syndication
Syndication refers to a "publish and subscribe" model for online information where specific content is "published" by one source and "syndicated" to be viewed or reused at other subscribing sites. RSS syndication is becoming very popular with both dedicated Internet publishers such as Yahoo and CNET and traditional offline publishers such as the New York Times and Wired magazine.
Publishers gain an advantage by using RSS to distribute news in an ongoing manner during the day. With the availability of 24x7 news channels, readers both online and off will go wherever the best information is available. Syndication RSS 'feeds' are dynamic, so when the publisher changes the content, its subscribers are automatically informed of the updates. Webmasters using RSS are reporting increased traffic to their sites as RSS subscribers click through to the original article. 'The benefit to us is we're distributing our headlines and the users come back to the site,' said Catherine Levene, vice president for business development at New York Times Digital, which has been offering RSS feeds for more than two years.
Content Aggregation
For publishers, RSS is a way to distribute information. For readers, RSS is a tool for getting content where, when and how they want it. The sources that publish RSS often allow you to subscribe to the latest updates from a particular section of their news, say just Sports, Financial News, or Arts. Each news 'feed' has a unique URL, usually identified by an orange XML icon or a link that says 'syndicate this site'. Hundreds of thousands of Web feeds are now available. Syndic8.com, which tracks syndicated news feeds, reported that 34,498 new feeds were created during just the one month of March 2004.
The most compelling use of RSS is that it lets users follow and stay current on dozens of websites by simply reviewing the feeds collected by their news aggregators. The sites can be scanned in seconds rather than having to be laboriously loaded individually to see whether any content has been updated. 'If you're not reading it in RSS you're wasting your time,' declaimed Microsoft's blogging evangelist, Robert Scoble, who says he subscribes to nearly 1,300 feeds.
Improvement over Email Blasts and Newsletters
RSS a way for organizations to replace other subscription models, such as email newsletters, and distribute information to interested parties both inside and outside the firewall. In the future, RSS may handle marketing tasks where e-mail now falls flat, says Jeanne Jennings, an e-mail marketing consultant in Washington, DC. As with e-mail, visitors can sign up for marketing alerts (for instance, useful product news plus discount coupons). Unlike e-mail, visitors can rest assured that they can't be spammed. If you don't like what you're getting via RSS, just pull the plug.
Chris Pirillo, who runs Lockergnome's RSS Resource, says bluntly, 'Email is dead.' Death, in his estimation, has resulted from email becoming so pervasive thatbetween emails from legitimate sources, bcc/Reply-All overload, automatic notifications, and the glut of spamit has ceased to be a reasonable delivery medium. 'When you have to tell people that you're not a spammer, that's a problem,' Pirillo says. As a result, he has made all his Lockergnome newsletters available as both email and RSS subscriptions and encourages subscribers to move away from the email distribution channel.
Using RSS, you can update those who need to know in a much less intrusive way than email. UserLand's Jake Savin has pointed out that with RSS, only people who need to see a piece of information (those subscribed to a given feed) have to view it. 'You don't have to send a company-wide email that people aren't going to read anyway,' Savin says.
Research and Education
Although RSS is only just beginning to make headway into the mainstream enterprise computing environment, it has great potential to help knowledge workers gather information more efficiently. What makes the news aggregator so useful is that it collects information effortlessly from the sites you previously needed to visit. RSS users quickly find that they are regularly receiving important information that they would not have known to look for. Says Alan Levine, 'since I started monitoring RSS feeds from about 80 instructional technology weblogs in January 2003, I can without a doubt say I have learned of more innovations and information relevant to my field than I would have gotten from checking web sites and reading listservs'.
Karen Schneider is the library director for the state of California's library Web portal, Librarian's Index to the Internet. As a librarian, she's found RSS to be an invaluable research tool. She says she quickly realized how valuable RSS could be for rapid dissemination of information while at the same time, it reduces email. 'This is the year that everyone has become fed up with email and more and more content has become available in RSS feeds,' she says. In a short time, she joined the chorus of librarians singing the praises of RSS, even posting an RSS tutorial on her blog, The Free Range Librarian.
Updates and Alerts
Here is a short list of companies and organizations using RSS to communicate frequently updated information to their customers and end-users:
[Source: Userland.com ]
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