Mar

RSS - Simple to Syndicate, but difficult to explain

Posted by Jonathan Wilbur Published in Web-Technologies

How can something such as Really Simple Syndication be really difficult to explain? What is a simple concept for some can be a rather confusion concept for others. RSS is quickly becoming a web standard and is already being used a supplement for email marketers. I’ve tried to explain this to a few folks and the best way I have found to explain this to not-so-web-saavy folks is this…

Do you read the paper every morning? Do you turn on the tv, or visit a news website like MSNBC, or CNN to catch up on news? Are you a big sports fan who wants to be informed the instant your favorite player is traded? Do you have a list of websites or blogs you visit on a regular basis? Do you receive a large amount of emails from retail companies? If so, you may learn to love RSS.

Imagine waking up in the morning, opening up your web browser and have all fo this there waiting for you. By using a personalized homepage (available from google, yahoo, aol, msn) or a feed reader (google reader, Outlook 2007), you can set up your space so that all headlines, alerts, emails, etc… show as headlines on one page. Clicking on the headline will take you to the original article on the hosted website or with some readers, will display some or all of the article content without leaving the page. Best of all, this page is updated as new articles available. It is very similar to reading your email. Your page (inbox) displays new headlines (subject lines)

This approach seems to have worked with some of the less technical folks I am around. How do you explain RSS?

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