RSS FEEDS: Why Use RSS Feeds
2nd in a series on RSS FEEDS
As discussed in the first article, RSS is a process to share information both from the author and user’s point of view without the user going to the author’s site. So, let us look at this from both side of the communication process.
From the website author’s point of view, The RSS Feed is providing information; it is an activity to improve communication flow. How is that, you ask. As you have been using the Internet, some of the sites you visit may ask you to sign up to stay informed. With that activity, you are signing up for an email mailing list and with that process, the emails start coming.
Do you wonder why you get so many emails? This is what signing up for Email lists cause and some of these sites share their email lists, so you get even more emails from the secondary sources. I sometimes feel buried by emails and it is not fun! I want the information, but in a manner that I can control.
With the RSS Feed the user has a Centralized Reading convenience. Using a feed reading software like Google Reader, the user does not have to bounce from site to site to see the information, because it is all in one place, just like a newspaper. You still get the information but in a short, more abbreviated format. IF you want more, then you go to the author’s website. Again typically, these are blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video.
Non-profits and businesses that use their sites for communication typically provide RSS Feed capability. They understand that if they want to keep members and customers coming back, they need to consider their online visitors. We have the RSS feed link buttons on this blog and throughout our home website. RSS Feeds are tools to simplify your Internet life.
In the next article in this series, we will discuss how you, the user and author in the RSS Feed process, actually use the RSS Feed process.
