THE DEMAND OF RSS

THE DEMAND OF RSS

The demand for RSS has reached a point at which blogs and information sites must syndicate their content or risk being left behind as irrelevant dinosaurs. Bloggers have furthered this revolution, because many thousands of topical bloggers use the link-and-comment format in their blog entries. These active bloggers feed their voracious appetites for information by using newsreaders — believe it or not, no serious topical blogger surfs Web sites anymore to read headlines or glean articles. There is simply no time for individual site visits, with their graphic-loading delays. Therefore, if an information site does not offer an RSS feed, it will never get cited by the most important bloggers, and it won’t receive traffic referred to it by those bloggers. The upshot of the RSS/newsreader revolution catalyzed by bloggers is that nearly everywhere you go to read articles or get information, you see buttons and links offering syndication feeds.

Later in this chapter, I explain how those buttons and links work with newsreaders. The result for savvy information consumers is a universe of information from almost every major provider and millions of small publishers and bloggers, all swiftly streamed to a singleWindow — the newsreader of your choice.
Spreading Your Word As a blogger, you are an information provider. This is true in a literal sense even if you write a highly personal, diary-style blog. If you want to be a relevant, up-to-date information provider, you must offer an RSS feed. Most services at least allow you to turn the feed on or off, and others also allow a setting with which you choose whether to syndicate full entries or partial entries. Offering a feed plugs you into the blogosphere more completely than if you operated a feedless site. Remember that the demand for feeds is growing. With every passing month, blogs that don’t provide syndication increasingly risk being avoided as too much trouble to read.

Assuming you have the RSS feed of your blog turned on (or are using a service in which it is always turned on), the software usually puts a link or button on your index page. (Blogger.com is a notable exception.) Most programs and blog services create just one feed for your entire blog. Advanced blog services and programs allow multiple feeds; each subject category of the blog might have a separate feed or there might even be a distinct feed for comments. Feeds for entries carry each posted entry (or an excerpt of the entry, in some cases) to the newsreader of anyone who has subscribed to your feed. Subscribing is free — it’s not like a magazine subscription.

Bloggers tend to be feed consumers as well as feed providers; the two sides of RSS syndication thrive on each other. (I was going to say “feed” on each other, but I was afraid my dazzling wit would actually injure people with laughter.)
The busiest bloggers tend to be the most dedicated newsreader users. But RSS is an Internet tool for the masses — or it will be soon — so you should probably try a newsreader whether you’re a light or heavy blogger.
Choosing a newsreader Newsreaders come in four basic types: Web newsreaders: These newsreaders are Web sites whose purpose is to offer newsreading functions. I recommend Web newsreaders for two reasons. First, they require no installation. Second, because your subscriptions reside on the Web and not on your computer, you can access your feeds from any Internet-connected computer. Most Web newsreaders offer free service.