Some asked me today about RSS feeds so I wanted to share the answer I came up with today.
RSS is an acronym that stands for Really Simple Syndication and Rich Site Summary. It represents all feed formats. Whats a feed? A feed is just a summary of blog entries (or posts) that are displayed in what is called NEWSREADERS.
What is a Newsreader?
Newsreaders are simply web sites or programs that display the contents of syndication feeds.
But Wait-I forgot to give you a definition of syndication-(A boomer thing?)
Syndication is a way to distribute writing,photos, or TV shows to a many places beyond the original distribution point for that piece of work. For example a TV show goes into syndication when a network affiliates purchase the right to run re-runs of the episodes. On a personal note that’s why I love TV-LAND because I get to see MASH and GUNSMOKE re-runs. (smile).
Also consider the syndication of newspaper columns and comic strips that are syndicated by agencies to newspapers all over the world. So as a blogger we are concerned about our entries or posts being syndicated to newsreaders. That means it can take our words or wisdom or whimsical insights to places they would not go if they remained on a basic static website.
How Valuable is the RSS?
There is a really high demand for RSS and as blogging boomers we must keep up. Folks are hungry for information and RSS feeds that hunger. Many readers are feeding that hunger with RSS newsreaders. There real facts are that if you do not offer an RSS feed on your site it will not get indexed by serious bloggers. As a result it will not receive traffic to it by those bloggers.
Good News
The good news is that most places you visit now on the web to read articles or get information there are buttons and links offering you the opportunity to get syndication feeds. You, the boomer blogger, can be launched into the blogosphere much more quickly with a RSS feed than if you have a feed free site.
Thats it for tonight. I will be sharing more but if you want to practice just go to the sidebar and on this blog or http://www.hornerartworkshop.com and key in your email. That one is called feedblitz. There are other RSS feeds but rather than just listing them I will deal with them individually in the future.
Pt. 2 -Subscribing to FEEDS