RSS feeds have been around for a long time. My experience with them was limited to adding the NY Times and the BBC as “Live Bookmarks” in Firefox.
NY Times live bookmark in Firefox
Slowly, I began to realize that there is more to it than that – a lot more. This is not an exhaustive list of uses for RSS feeds, but rather, a description of how I personally find them useful. Using two points of view, personal productivity and community organizing, I will explain why feeds are important.
Huh?
If you have never heard of RSS feeds, then I recommend the introduction found in this Wikipedia article.
Here’s my take: as a website adds content, its RSS feed automatically lets you know – it gives out a link to the original page (or article or post or whatever), it gives out the title, and usually other information like author, date, etc…
Because of the structure of RSS, the feeds are machine readable. This allows a feed to be imported and exported and for different applications to use it in creative ways. They are used by readers (aka aggregators) like Google Reader and on the social web (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc…).
Want to see what one looks like? Here is a link to this blog’s RSS feed to illustrate the point.
Why bother?
Have you ever been to a great website only to forget to check it again for a zillion years?
- Maybe you want to keep up with breaking news from Dealzmodo.
- Maybe you want to find out if your organization is in the news with Google News.
- Maybe you want to digest a lot of information as quickly and painlessly as you can.
Here’s how I use Google Reader to digest a lot of information quickly.
- I added a bunch of RSS feeds that I want to track into Google Reader. If you already have a Gmail or other Google account, just sign in using the same log-in.
- I grouped these feeds into “folders” like work, tech, news, shopping, and others.
- Each morning, I visit Google Reader – which serves as my one-stop “what’s going on” center – and scan the titles of these feeds. This allows me to quickly digest a lot of information. For the most part, simply looking at titles, gives me a sense of what’s going on. I am selective about what I click on and only do so on items I want to read in-depth.
If you are so inclined, Google Reader allows you to share feeds or even folders of feeds with the public or with friends you specify.
Using Google Reader - click to view larger size in a new window
Why you should provide an RSS feed
Are you with a nonprofit organization that is looking to spread a message? You probably already have a website – I think that you should consider using the social web to spread the message as far and wide as you can. RSS feeds are very helpful in doing so. Having one allows people who use RSS readers to keep up with your work.
Also, and this is an important point, each RSS link drives people to your website. This gives people the opportunity to stumble upon other items while they are there – donate links, take action links, sign up for e-updates, whatever.
If you have a website and it provides RSS, here are some things you can do:
- Drive traffic to your site via Facebook (look for a posting on nonprofit Facebook pages in the near future). See this link.
- Drive traffic to your site via Twitter. See this link.
- Drive traffic to your site via MySpace. See this link.
Other ways RSS has proved useful to me:
You may notice that this blog has sections for Delicious links, Flickr photos, and Twitter updates. This is all made possible through the magic that is RSS.
Am I missing something? Do you use RSS for something not mentioned above? Is there a better way to do something? Let me know, comment and share below!
