I am sure you have seen that orange looking button similar to the one on this post on some websites, tool bars and blogs. If you do not know what it is then you have been missing for so long.
I bet you have been wondering what it is.
Well, that symbol is the standard symbol for RSS or RSS feeds-meaning really simple syndication.
(Before I continue, let me quickly reveal that this simple tool you have been ignoring can do the following for you)
- save your time on the internet by letting you read or see all the post on your favourite websites in one place
- keep away unnecessary emails and spam mails from your email addresses
- keeps you updated on any new post on any website or blog without you going to the site in question
And much more.
Now let me give you the details.
So what is RSS?
According to wikipedia, RSS is most commonly translated as really simple syndication but sometimes rich site summary, and that it is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works –such as blog entries, news headlines, audio and video- in a standardized format.
They also explained that an RSS document called a feed or web feed or channel includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship.
They gave some of the benefits of the tool as helping publishers syndicate their content automatically and also to help readers to get timely updates from their favoured sites by subscribing or to aggregate many feed of their favoured websites into one place.
Usually RSS feeds are read with software called RSS readers, feed reader or aggregators. There are many feed readers you can use. Popular websites like Google, yahoo and other have feed readers you can use.
ADVANTAGES OF USING RSS
We have already listed out the many benefits of using RSS subscription. I will give the typical scenario of how many people stay updated and leave you to decipher the benefits.
Some people have more than one email address; maybe 3 or 5 in all. The first 2 is their private emails, the remaining 2 or 3 is used to subscribe for newsletters. They go through all this trouble to keep spam mails and unwanted mails away from their personal emails and then use the other emails to subscribe for whatever they want or like.
Those who have only one email address have it hard. They go through the daily trouble of deleting mails sent automatically by the auto responders of the different website where they subscribed via email for more information about a product or information they were interested in.
This is usually a time waster and very annoying.
So for days if they don’t check their mails, the unwanted mail could grow up to 50 -100% of the total unread mails.
That is an awful lot of deleting and time wasting activity on your hands.
Well, if they had subscribed via RSS feeds they wouldn’t have to have 5. This is because RSS feeds do not your email to function. It only needs a Reader and Readers are every where on the internet.
The popular web mail providers have Readers like Google, yahoo, msn and many others.
All you do is add the feeds from websites you like to the feed reader.
And then whenever you are logged in you can check your reader to see what post are available then you can decide to click on the link to have a full read on the website or skip to another feed.
I personally use Google reader, one of the products of Google.
And I have a feed from my FaceBook account, and many websites and blogs that I visit every day online.
It pays to subscribe by RSS. Go out and try it out.
Good luck
