Syndication is Simple, Really!
 By: Neil Buckley

The RSS Revolution

What is RSS?

RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication, and defines a format for exposing the content of a site for use by others.  The format is XML-compliant and consists of a simple list of items with links for more information.  Traditionally, the items are news headlines, but they could just as easily be a list of products, people, categories, or anything that applies to the publisher of the list.

 

There are multiple versions of the RSS format being used today, but the basic structure is similar across all versions.  Some have more information than others and are more extensible to various options, while others are made to be very simple and more human-readable.  The main benefit of RSS is that it establishes a set of standards that are available to be used by many sites to easily distribute their information in a quick manner.

Publishing RSS Feeds

Publishing an RSS feed is an easy task since it is just a matter of formatting the output of the content into RSS format rather than HTML.  Some of our content-producing clients are discussing having SBSI add RSS feeds to their site.  You can find many RSS feeds on the internet today simply by visiting news and portal sites such as Yahoo!, NPR and New York Times.  On many sites you will see a small orange rectangle that says RSS or XML indicating that they have an RSS feed available.
 

Reading RSS Feeds

Using an RSS feed from a content provider is a little more complicated, but there are several RSS reading applications out there for users to download.  Many RSS readers are available that install as add-ons to your email client or run stand-alone, and will categorize your favorite RSS sources for easy browsing.  Many sites make extensive use of collecting RSS feeds from various sources to populate their pages with a variety of content.  For instance, Yahoo! allows users to personalize their home pages by choosing from a list of RSS feeds.

The information extracted from an RSS feed can be formatted to suit the needs of the reader.  So if a website wanted to display the top headlines from another source on their homepage, they could do so with total control of how it looks aesthetically.  SBSI is also working with some of our clients on the possibility of incorporating content from RSS feeds into their sites.

RSS Potential

RSS has been around for several years now, but has recently grown in popularity as the popularity of blog sites have grown.  It has been a common feature in many blog sites and is now becoming prevalent in mainstream news and portal sites as well.  In the future it will take a more important role in the inter-connected World Wide Web.