At WAT Consult we’ve been conducting quite a few researches and studies revolving around the blogosphere. Our first report was about how many people in India really blog. The second one was about online blog related behaviour and the third, which will be released in a day or two is about – What exactly are people reading online?
But the most striking bit of technology related inference which I could draw – was the complete ignorance towards RSS.
If you are from India and can’t survive without your RSS Reader, let me congratulate you – because you belong to a very elite group!
More than half of the blogging junta in India have no clue as to what RSS is…
Here is a simple explanation of RSS and how it can help you simplify your online life:
So what is RSS?
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.
Huh? What?
Well it actually is that.
For the history of RSS check Wikipedia.
So how to use RSS?
Let us assume that you like to follow a lot of blogs online.
Specific blogs like WATblog, TechCrunch etc and also News Sites (Business Standard, Financial Express etc ) and Personal blogs (like those of your friends).
So every time you get online – you go to these sites / blogs and check for fresh content.
That’s fine if you follow just 2-3 blogs, but imagine if you follow around 20 of them.
Not only are you wasting a lot of time going to each site / blog but also are going to be left disappointed if you do not see new content on these sites.
So how does RSS help you?
Instead of you going to these sites and blogs – let them come and deliver content to you.
How?
Firstly you’ll need an RSS reader.
Google Reader is widely used and is of course free of cost.
Other readers include bloglines, newsgator, My Yahoo!
Some desktop programs like Feedreader and FeedDemon are also widely used.
What Next?
Each site has a Feed URL
Eg: WATblogs’s feed URL is : http://feeds.feedburner.com/WATblog/india
So you can either go to your feed reader and click on Add Subscriptions and paste the feed URL into the field:
..Or, Most of these sites have a button like one of these (Which is linked to their feed url):
Clicking on them would most probably take you to one of the following pages, via which you can directly subscribe to the feed in your reader:
(Google Reader will give you the option to add feeds directly to your homepage or add it to your reader – Selecting homepage would add it to your iGoogle page)
Once subscribed to all your favourite feeds – you do not have to go to each and every site individually and can access all the content from your feed reader. Any fresh content will automatically get updated in your reader.
Well hoping that RSS makes a little more sense to you know. If it doesn’t…then feel free to ask us any questions and I would also highly recommend seeing this video -
RSS explained in Plain Simple English:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU
Another comprehensive tutorial is available here.
nice video. thanks for sharing it
The problem is that the publisher keep publishing the same content again and again, due to this i end up reading the same content and while trying to mark unwanted content as read, i miss reading the best post. I am using dialup for my internet connectivity, just imagine the time and bandwidth i will be wasting for nothing
Keep publishing the same content again and again? That means – all blogs talking about the same thing?
I used your post to explain RSS to my girl friend and my mother and they were able to understand to some extent.
Probably integeration of RSS Readers to mail will boost up.But Yahoo Beta has it since its launch i guess. But not upto mark. Google Reader must be integerated to GMail which will make more people to use feed readers.
@ Deepak: Now make sure your other friends understand it too! Thanks tho
@ Srikant: You can actually subscribe to feeds via email. Even at WATblog we offer that service.
Problem is if you are subscribed to around 20 blogs and approximately 2 articles per blog per day = massive cluttering of your inbox.