Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Wasted Time

I am fleshing out writing an article on RSS, so bear with me as I figure out exactly what I want to say. I see the need for such an article because there is still much confusion over what RSS is, what it can be used for, and even how not to use it. I often find myself surprised at the depth of misunderstanding. For example there are certain disciplines I work with where I expect a lower level of understanding of IT and Web 2.0 related things. However, when it comes from the IT and Web Development fields I am taken off guard. Why are IT and Web professionals unaware of how RSS works or even what it is? My fear is that when I start writing this I will have written a very long article that no one will want to read. But I feel it needs to be said, so here it goes….

What is RSS?

RSS stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. (I actually don’t like either of these names. Rich Site Summary is not correct since an RSS feed contains more than a site summary, even a rich one. Really Simple Syndication is a misnomer because in my experience people find it anything but “really simple”. Then when they can’t figure it out the name Really Simple is there to mock them for not finding it so simple.) It can also be referred to as a “news feed” or just a “feed”. (“News feed” is fairly descriptive to me, it evokes a certain image, but maybe that’s because I know what it means?)

So how do we talk about something that doesn’t have a very good definition? Maybe first by expanding on the definition? Could we also say that RSS (regardless of what it stands for) is a method for distributing content on the internet? A publisher can create an RSS feed such that new content is placed within the feed as it becomes available. The feed can contain a title and a brief summary or the entire content. (I prefer to have all of my content available in the feed, but I am not trying to make money on ads on my website). Once a feed is created it is made available on a website. Then an end-user can subscribe to the feed in what is called a feed-reader or news aggregator. These aggregators can be either web-based or client-based. The type of content being subscribed to would really determine the type of feed-reader used. For example, if you were subscribing to a lot of feeds from blogs and news websites a web based feed-reader (such as Google Reader) would be an ideal solution since you could access your subscriptions from any internet connected computer. If, on the other hand, you were subscribing to audio and video podcasts then a client-based feed-reader would probably suit you better. iTunes is an example of a client-based software that has certain feed-reader capabilities built in, the ability to subscribe to podcasts.

Why use RSS?

From a publisher’s standpoint, if you are creating content that is updated on a regular basis then you should have an RSS feed. If you want another way of communicating with people you should have an RSS feed. If you are publishing on the web you should have an RSS feed. It all boils down to communication. You want to communicate with your customers in as many ways possible. That allows the customer to choose how they want to hear from you. For example, suppose you want to set up a system where people can be alerted to any significant system outages. You can send an email out to all of your customers. However, many people get such a high volume of email that these kind of notices are often ignored, so you are only reaching a small percentage of your customers via email. You can publish your alerts to a website. However your customers would have to know that there was a need to check your website for an update. So while a higher percentage will be reached via a website than via email you as the publisher have no control over WHEN the customer sees your notice. You have to wait for them to come to your website. Now, if after you publish your alert to your website it were also added to an RSS feed you have a method of reaching your customers in a more timely manner. For any of your customers who were subscribed to your RSS feed would be given the details of your alert right in their feed-reader. You as the publisher are now pushing your content to your customers rather than waiting for them to pull it from your site. However, does this mean that if you have an RSS feed you should abandon email and websites? ABSOLUTELY NOT. The RSS feed is meant to supplement, NOT REPLACE, existing forms of communication.

From the end-users standpoint, if you are following many different websites all of which are updated on different, irregular schedules then subscribing to RSS feeds just makes your life easier. For example, I personally subscribe to 75 feeds (in Google Reader, plus another dozen or so podcasts in iTunes). There is no way I am going to check 75 different websites on a regular basis, so what happens? I miss out on content I want to see. By subscribing to these site’s feeds I get to see all unread entries in one place. According to the stats I had over 10,000 new items in the last 30 days. Did I read them all? Of course not. But i was able to quickly scan through and bypass the ones I didn’t want to read while finding content I was interested in. Content I never would have seen if I was manually checking websites. Also, because the feed-reader is doing all the work I can subscribe to feeds that maybe only get updated once a month. Then I don’t have to remember to check for updates when a new month comes around. When the content is updated I know about it. Conversely I can subscribe to feeds that get updated every hour. I don’t have time to check a website every hour of the day. But my feed-reader can. So then, when I have the time I can catch up on all of the updates without having to navigate through many different pages of a website. Are there instances where I don’t subscribe to the feed but instead manually check the website? Yes there are. In some instances the feed contains more content than I am ever interested in seeing. In other words the feed is too general, I am looking for content from a specific topic out of several covered on a website. Some websites not only have a general feed but also topic-specific feeds to satisfy this requirement. But for those websites that don’t it it just easier to periodically check the website manually so I am not inundated with a ton of content I am not interested in.

I will continue thinking about this topic and how to put it all together, but right now I am very tired and will have to come back to this later…