Introduction to RSS & web feeds
Web feeds are a technology that lets you access new information put out by a website or a publisher without waiting for an email or visiting that website directly.
Here's how it works...
If you're interested in learning about new tactics in email marketing, for example, you can find this information at various websites. For the sake of argument, let's consider this website: Email Marketing Reports (the one you're currently visiting).
To keep up with new information published at this site you would normally either...
1. Keep coming back to manually check for new articles or links.
2. Sign-up to the email newsletter.
The first option can get time consuming, as you have to go find the information yourself. The second option is easier, as you let me send you an email containing new stuff published at the site. But it means another email subscription...and the newsletter only appears every two weeks.
Web feeds offer a third alternative.
Whenever new material appears at Email Marketing Reports, it's marked within a "feed" page or file, using appropriate coding. This special page contains basic info about what is new and where you'll find it. It may even contain the new information in its entirety. It's kind of a "What's new?" page, but with special coding.
So far this still sounds like you have to keep checking this page to get updates. But that's where the special coding comes in.
Various online services, email clients and Internet browsers are able to read this special coding (which follows a standard) so they can report back on anything new they find. This works automatically.
In other words, you can tell, for example, an online service to monitor the "feeds" from numerous websites, and present the results in one convenient location.
So the machines do the hard work. All you have to do is check one location and get the latest info from all the websites you'd otherwise have to visit individually.
This feed-reading capability is within easy reach. Many modern browsers or email clients have this functionality built in. Or there are (free) online services where you get a personalized web page collating your feeds in one place (see, for example, Bloglines).
Armed with a service or your own software, all you need to do is find the feeds.
That's pretty easy, too. Websites highlight the location of their feeds through links marked XML or RSS or Feed (or similar) or with the feed icon (
). You give the destination url to your online service or software and it starts monitoring straight away.
For more information on feeds, see this Wikipedia article.
And RSS?
RSS is simply a technical acronym for one of the more common formatting standards for feeds. It's also become a synonym for the concept of a web feed.
Pros and cons for users
The benefits for the users are manifold. It saves time and energy searching for new information at your favorite websites. You don't need to submit an email address, so there are no privacy issues involved. And you can stop monitoring a feed at any time.
The downside is that you can get feed overload. And not everyone wants to add yet another form of communication or information retrieval to their overcrowded lives.
Pros and cons for email marketers
For email marketers, delivering content via a feed gets round the problems of deliverability. There are no blacklists, filters, junk folders etc. involved. The user retrieves the information directly. You always get 100% deliverability and spam is not an issue. Nobody can spam a user with a web feed, as the feed reading service or software only looks at and reports on those feeds the user tells it to look at.
The downside is that relatively few users are actively using feeds. Plus there are issues with measurement, personalization, presentation and more.
The quick conclusion: web feeds are another way to communicate with your customers and prospects. And like all communication vehicles it can be used together with other vehicles or instead of other vehicles.
For details on all the relevant arguments and issues, try the article links in the RSS and RSS versus email marketing sections.