Back in the good old days of the first dot.com boom, a technology appeared that heralded a change in the way that computer users would be informed of new content over the internet. It was called RSS. However, at the time, no one seemed too bothered about it. How times change.
RSS stands for either Rich Site Summary, or Really Simple Syndication, depending on your school of thought. RSS allows a site owner to syndicate abstracts from their website to a wide range of users quickly. RSS feeds tend to be written in a language called "xml" (but you need not worry about this).
In essence, it provides an alternative way to inform users of new content from sending them e-mails or hoping for a placement in the main Google or Yahoo search engine. Also, unlike search engines that update on at most a daily basis, an RSS feed is constantly being updated.
So how does it work for a user?
Say you were a regular visitor to TimesOnline, as I'm sure you are. If you scroll down to near the bottom of the left-hand menu system, you'll find a small orange box with the letters "RSS" clearly displayed. Click it and you'll find a list of the Times Online's RSS feeds.
You can then use the urls (web addresses) of the RSS feeds and input them into an RSS reader. There are two types of readers: one is a web-based, the other is based in your internet browser.
I'll concentrate on web-based readers as they appear to be the most popular. Probably the most widespread is powered by Yahoo. The reason being that it's incredibly easy to use their services.
For example, my own website, like many others, contains a link on every page which says "Add to MyYahoo". If you already have a Yahoo account, then when you click the link, my RSS feed gets automatically added to your personalised homepage that you will see when ever you start your internet browser.
The real advantage for users is that they can see when their favourite websites have been updated without having to actually visit it every time they log on to the web.
For webside owners, there are many advantages.
The first is little known: a reduction on server load. A web server is just like a regular home PC, it can only handle a certain amount of tasks at any one time. So while it's great to have visitors, you only really want those that will make you money and provide page views. A vistor who just looks at the homepage and then clicks off when they see its not been updated is worthless; they haven't gained anything nor have you.
However, services such as MyYahoo download your website's RSS feed at regular intervals and then store it locally so that each time a user views your feed, they do not actually use up any of your server resources.
The other key advantage for a website owner who offers RSS feeds is the ability to communicate directly to customers or users without the hindrances of e-mail spam filters or search engine technology. I know that when I update my website, the 10,000 or so people who subscribe to our feeds will automatically be informed of our new content. I need not send them each an e-mail (which is costly if you are to avoid being placed in the junk mailbox) and I need not wait for them to sporadically visit or stumble across our content on a search engine.
It's only been in the last year or so with the explosion of blogs (syndicated by RSS) and the launch of RSS reader services such as MyYahoo, Google, Newsgator and Bloglines that content-rich websites have seen real benefits from offering RSS feeds to users.
It was fortunate, therefore, that I chose the middle of last year to begin work on my PinkNews.co.uk project aware that, with the growing take up of RSS, I could get my news on to the desktops of thousands of people without too much hassle.
There's plenty of opensource (ie free) software available over the internet that will help you to create RSS feeds that will automatically update when you add new content to your website.
There's also many RSS directories and aggregators that you can submit your feed into in order to reach a large audience. Foremost in Britain is NewsNow.co.uk, who carry the RSS feeds from my website and just about every other news publisher across the world (including Times Online). They aggregate the information in the feeds, constantly updating and ranking articles by popularity and relevancy.
But how can you use it to help your online business, even if you're not a news publisher?
The first use I can envisage is for customer communications: you could use an RSS feed to list special offers, announcements and service updates that are relevant to your customers. This saves you the trouble of e-mailing each customer individually and will encourage visits to your website when users are suitably "teased" by the headline you provide.
The other is for corporate communications. Sites such as NewsNow.co.uk will allow you to post a feed containing press releases to their system. This may be a great way of attracting new customers to your online business who were already looking at information relevant to your particular industry.
It's interesting to consider that 64 per cent of my website's traffic comes from subscribers to my RSS feed from services such as MyYahoo or through aggregators such as NewsNow.co.uk. I certainly notice when their systems go down or they "forget" to update my feed, as my traffic drops off dramatically.
For more information about RSS, visit or see NewsNow.
For open source programmes/scripts to allow you to offer RSS (using xml technology) click here.
