RSS Feeds
What is it?
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a lightweight XML format designed for sharing headlines and other Web content. Think of it as a distributable “What’s New” for your site. RSS originated in 1997 and has evolved into a popular means of sharing content between sites (including the BBC, CNET, CNN, Disney, Forbes, Motley Fool, Wired, Red Herring, Salon, Slashdot, ZDNet, and more). RSS solves myriad problems webmasters commonly face, such as increasing traffic, and gathering and distributing news. RSS can also be the basis for additional content distribution services.
From a consumer angle, RSS allows you to see when sites from all over the internet have added new content. You can get the latest headlines and articles (or even audio files, photographs or video) in one place, as soon as they are published, without having to remember to visit each site every day.
It takes the hassle out of staying up-to-date, by showing you the very latest information that you are interested in.
At present, RSS and Atom are the two most popular feed formats. Most feed readers support both of these.
What can it do for you?
RSS feeds present and share information that changes over time. So if your business has information that information-consumers may be interested in, then RSS feeds may be of value.
Another interesting use of RSS feeds is internal to companies and enterprises. Even companies with fewer than 100 employees may find that RSS feeds on the company intranet provides an effective way to share information that changes daily. Instead of emailing this information, employees just view the information through their intranet RSS reader.
Business models for the effective use of RSS Feeds are still being discovered. However, a number of models are emerging and include the following:
Advertising
If you have content which people are interested in, this will create traffic. Traffic means page views. Advertisers will pay to market products and services to these page views. RSS feeds tend to be monitored - if ever so briefly - more often than other forms of information because of the changing nature of the content. This monitoring creates traffic, not only to the sites that own the content, but also to those that link to the RSS feeds as their sites become more dynamic and useful to users.
Premium content
RSS feeds display headlines and a brief description. For premium content, RSS feeds become a way of allowing users to see what is in a business’es content inventory before buying. If a user then wants the full article, they can buy a subscription or just that article.
Cost reduction
This model uses RSS feeds to replace email lists and costs associated with disseminating information. The email “push” approach has numerous problems including spam, new laws regarding spam, email address churn, bandwidth inefficiency - lots of bytes sent and only a small percentage read. RSS feeds use a filtered “pull” approach, where a user monitors feeds, and only if a match of interest exists is the full article pulled over the internet. The RSS feed itself is generally only an index or table of contents onto the actual content, therefore much less bandwidth is used compared with email.
Business communication
RSS feeds can be used by businesses to capture status reports, changing events over time, B2B communication regarding joint projects, and many other business uses. RSS feeds provide a standard format for capturing and sharing changing information and are accessible via the web both outside and within business firewalls.
Score Communications work with clients to understand, implement and harness the power of RSS Feeds.
For more information on how RSS could help your business, contact us.