FeedBurner - RSS Stats, The Next Generation
RSS could be the great savior of the web.
For those of you who don't know, RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication", and is a process by which Blogs and Websites can "Syndicate" their content simply. Simple enough? Yes, it is.
Essentially, any website that publishes news or articles or information in any kind of standard format can publish an RSS Feed, which is a machine readable file (typically in XML format) that someone with a News Reader can "subscribe" to and get updated whenever there is something new.
Think of a newsletter that instead of you sending to your subscribers you simply put on the shelf and update the post-it note on your wall to say that there's a new issue. Everyone's Newsreader is set to check for new items for their subscriptions every so often so if there's something new, they'll get it without you having to send it to them.
The brilliance of RSS really lies in the fact that you're actually "subscribing" to something you want to read. It's "pull" not "push" and that all really means one HUGE thing: no spam.
The beauty and speed of the Blog revolution is that most blog sites have built in RSS feed capabilities. Since blogs are essentially item-by-item journal entries they make for a perfect application of RSS.
The only real downfall of RSS to date is that it takes a little bit of knowledge to get up and running and those who publish RSS are left in a bit of the dark about usage. Since it's not a website that someone visits you often don't know how many people are reading your stuff, if any, and when someone views yours RSS file directly they are typically presented with a page of code that would make any newbie motivated subscriber potentially turn away in confusion if they didn't already 'get it'.
Enter FeedBurner - a simply concept to take RSS feeds and make them human readable, trackable and interactive. Their website is easy to use and understand, quick to get started and fun to play with so it motivates a blogger to convert all of their RSS feeds to FeedBurner feeds. Feedburner has been around for a couple of years but I've finally gotten the full tour and am incresingly impressed with their simple approach to a complicated problem. As a result I've updated the feed for this blog to be the more attractive: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Gadielcom.
The benefits to the reader are immediate. Instead of an XML file, they get a nicely readable page with instructions for downloading a News Reader and Subscribing. For the blogger, they get knowledge of usage and tools for promotion.
The web is an incredible intelligent place, but sometimes the weakness can be that those without PHDs don't have the time or skill to put sophisticated webpages together. It's pieces of software like FeedBurner that actually make it easier to use and will motivate more people to get involved in a more elevated way. Cheers.
For those of you who don't know, RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication", and is a process by which Blogs and Websites can "Syndicate" their content simply. Simple enough? Yes, it is.
Essentially, any website that publishes news or articles or information in any kind of standard format can publish an RSS Feed, which is a machine readable file (typically in XML format) that someone with a News Reader can "subscribe" to and get updated whenever there is something new.
Think of a newsletter that instead of you sending to your subscribers you simply put on the shelf and update the post-it note on your wall to say that there's a new issue. Everyone's Newsreader is set to check for new items for their subscriptions every so often so if there's something new, they'll get it without you having to send it to them.
The brilliance of RSS really lies in the fact that you're actually "subscribing" to something you want to read. It's "pull" not "push" and that all really means one HUGE thing: no spam.
The beauty and speed of the Blog revolution is that most blog sites have built in RSS feed capabilities. Since blogs are essentially item-by-item journal entries they make for a perfect application of RSS.
The only real downfall of RSS to date is that it takes a little bit of knowledge to get up and running and those who publish RSS are left in a bit of the dark about usage. Since it's not a website that someone visits you often don't know how many people are reading your stuff, if any, and when someone views yours RSS file directly they are typically presented with a page of code that would make any newbie motivated subscriber potentially turn away in confusion if they didn't already 'get it'.
Enter FeedBurner - a simply concept to take RSS feeds and make them human readable, trackable and interactive. Their website is easy to use and understand, quick to get started and fun to play with so it motivates a blogger to convert all of their RSS feeds to FeedBurner feeds. Feedburner has been around for a couple of years but I've finally gotten the full tour and am incresingly impressed with their simple approach to a complicated problem. As a result I've updated the feed for this blog to be the more attractive: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Gadielcom.
The benefits to the reader are immediate. Instead of an XML file, they get a nicely readable page with instructions for downloading a News Reader and Subscribing. For the blogger, they get knowledge of usage and tools for promotion.
The web is an incredible intelligent place, but sometimes the weakness can be that those without PHDs don't have the time or skill to put sophisticated webpages together. It's pieces of software like FeedBurner that actually make it easier to use and will motivate more people to get involved in a more elevated way. Cheers.
posted by Andy at
12:16 AM
<< Home