Simplifying RSS Feeds

There is such an abundance of information on the web covering as many topics as you can think of. The sky'’s the limit as far as content. Traditionally, users would have to search and find the information they wanted on their own. While surfing the web is still popular and a much-needed method for obtaining information, an easier approach to obtaining this information lies within RSS.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is a method for delivering content to interested audiences on an automatic basis. Users can subscribe to RSS feeds by using an aggregator (also called channel reader or RSS reader), which may or may not be built into a web browser. Internet Explorer 7 and Safari are two web browsers that have RSS capability built right in. There are also other freeware or shareware programs that have easy to use interfaces and features to customize subscribed feeds.

Digital content producers write RSS using XML computer language. RSS can either be created using programs such as Reinvented Software Feeder (Mac) or Notepage FeedforAll (PC), or by hand-coding. XML is similar to HTML but much simpler. HTML has a lot of variants where as XML has the basics such as title, links to images and e-mail, description, publication date, and author. An explosion in RSS technology came with the rise of podcasts. Other content for RSS feeds are blogs and news text.

What'’s so great about RSS is that any web enterprise can create its own code and tags. This is how iTunes works for Podcasting. Apple created new descriptions and keywords that are recognized when feeds are added to iTunes. Users can search for both regular keywords and iTunes keywords. RSS is flexible enough in the way it'’s written to support additional code like this. When subscribing to a podcast through iTunes, you may see a link to the iTunes store. This is an example of the additional code from Apple.

The goal of digital content producers is to get as much content into the hands of as many viewers as possible. I believe RSS handles this task efficiently and effectively. Producers of RSS feeds know that the information they are publishing will be read. It isn't like publishing a website and wondering how many people will actually find it to receive the information. From an audience perspective, it’s like a digital version of magazine subscriptions. All you have to do is subscribe and sit back and wait for the information to come to you.

“Simplifying RSS Feeds.” Franklin McMahon. Digital Content Producer. August 2006: Vol. 32, No. 8.