RSS Feeds RSS also known as rich site summary or real simply syndication, arrived on
scene a number of years ago, but was only recently embraced by webmasters as a means to effectively syndicate content. RSS Feeds provide webmasters and content providers an avenue to provide concise summaries to prospective readers. Thousands of commercial web sites and blogs now publish content summaries in an RSS feed. Each item in feed typically contains a headline; article summary and link back to online article.Benefit to Webmaster As web has become more crowded webmasters have been striving to provide fresh and up to date content for their website visitors. Many webmasters have discovered they can easily utilize information in RSS feeds to provide fresh web content.
RSS feeds are composed in XML, which is a very simple markup language. Similar to HTML, XML uses tags to identify fields. Webmasters can easily parse RSS feed and dynamically create web pages that contain headlines and summaries. The feeds will continuously update, supplying a steady stream of automatically generated fresh content.
RSS allows webmasters to: 1.) Provide fresh and relevant content on their website, which encourages users to return.
2.) Constantly changing content means that search engine spiders will visit more frequently.
3.) Automate content delivery.
The benefits of RSS feeds are not limited to webmasters, surfers too benefit from technology as well.
Benefit to Web Surfers The beauty of RSS is that readers can quickly scan headlines (titles) and read articles of interest. Because information is condensed and provided in a single location users can generally review more information in a shorter time frame. Additional information is only a click away. Best of all readers choose feeds they wish to see, there is no spam with RSS. If you are not completely thrilled with content appearing in a feed simply remove it from newsreader. The technology is a pull technology rather than push technology, meaning content is not forced on consumers, who pull content they want to see.
RSS allows for users to: 1.) Easily locate information.
2.) Read condensced information or 'soundbytes' with clearly marked and dated topic material.
3.) Classify and categorize information in an easy to navigate manner.
4.) Maximize their time without having to deal with spam.
RSS feeds can be viewed in a news aggregator or reader, which constantly updates and shows unread feeds. I found functionality of newsreaders to be similar to a simple email client. Consumers generally enter URL of any RSS feeds that interest them. Topics with a common theme can be segregated into related groups.
