Tools: RSS Feeds Explained

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. An RSS feed is a way of syndicating content so that it can be published to feed readers and other websites. That's the jargon explanation. Let's look at a more traditional analogy.

Think of a the magazine rack at Barnes & Noble or an old fashioned news stand with hundreds of magazines and an assortment of daily publications. That represents the internet as a whole. Readers seeking out and visiting your website or blog are like readers seeking out and flipping through a copy of your magazine from the rack.

RSS is like home delivery. When readers sign up for an RSS feed through their favorite feed reader or add your RSS feed to their Yahoo!, Google, or AOL home page, it's like subscribing to your content. Whenever they open their feed reader or go to their home page, they will see at a glance if you have posted new content.

This makes RSS a powerful tool, both for publishers looking to connect with their audience and for readers who want to monitor various channels of information on a single web page.

Let's take a look at an RSS feed in action. Here is a picture of my personalized "iGoogle" home page:

Right in the middle, above the weather, is the RSS feed for my Technology For Real Estate Professionals blog, right next to Google News and the CNN news feed. As a reader, you can use RSS feeds from publishers to create your own custom home page showing the latest items from each publisher. As a publisher, you can use RSS to enable readers to see your content right next to CNN, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. As I said, it's a powerful tool.

How can a publisher offer an RSS feed? Most publishing tools already create an RSS feed, but users may not understand how to subscribe to that feed. One solution is to use a free service like feedburner to publish an RSS feed with special buttons called chiclets (named after brightly colored squares of chewing gum) that make it easy for readers to add that RSS feed to their Yahoo!, Google, or AOL home page.

Here is an illustration showing the RSS subscription button, the large orange button in the upper left, and the RSS subscription chiclets to add the feed to a variety of home pages and feed readers.



To add the Technology For Real Estate Professionals blog to your home page, click the orange button to the right of this post, then click the chiclet for your home page or news reader.

If you don't have a custom Yahoo! or Google home page, click on the links below to get started. Custom home pages are completely free and they are a valuable way to get organized so that you spend less time surfing from site to site without missing any new articles or posts.

What Is My Yahoo!?

Getting Started With My Yahoo!

How do I personalize Google?

Once you've created your custom home page, don't forget to subscribe to the Technology For Real Estate Professionals RSS feed by clicking the orange button where it says "Click here to subscribe." If you have any questions about how to subscribe to my RSS feed or how to set up your own RSS feed, please contact me.

Thanks for reading... and subscribing!

Frank Jewett