What is this RSS, XML, RDF and Atom business?

It’s been a long day at work and you’re not in the mood to make dinner or go out. Time for the reliable pizza delivery man. You call the order and he quickly arrives with a steaming hot pizza within the promised 30 minutes. If it were that easy with a demanding family where no one can agree on the same restaurant for dinner. One wants Mexican, another wants Chinese and another wants a hamburger and Mexican.

Instead of rushing to three different locations, you call a delivery service that goes to all of them and bring it to you. What could be easier to get a meal without cooking it or fetching it?

RSS, XML, RDF and Atom are the Internet food delivery people. The content they deliver is mixed and cooked elsewhere on the internet, just like food is not prepared on your doorstep and the content is provided to you by acronym partners through software or an online application. Instead of trying to remember all the places you like to go to get the latest news, it all occurs to you once you order your food.

Click on any of those orange or blue RSS, XML, or RDF buttons and you’ll see garbled text. Some of it is readable, but reading between them is slow and difficult. In this case, you have the raw ingredients of the content known as feed. To make it easily readable, download a feed reader that can interpret (add) the ingredients, or subscribe to an online service that can do the same.

When the software or application is ready to go, click the orange or blue button (or “Syndicate this page,” or whatever on these lines) and copy the resulting URL from the address box. Paste it into the app to cook the ingredients where it is delivered ready for you to enjoy.

Syndication is not a new concept on the Internet, but it is gaining popularity as more websites and newsletters are churning content into syndicated files, which are fed into an aggregator. Think of it as travel-ready content anywhere you need to go.

Take the feed and send it to the aggregator, another way to bookmark (or bookmark) a site because you want to come back later. But how often did you return to the site through your bookmarks / favorites?

Instead of scrolling from site to site looking for information, I have it all in front of me through the aggregator. The feeds are arranged in folders by subject to facilitate their search. If I’m writing about the latest virus or worm, I open the security folder with the security-related feeds and scan them.

Scanning content through aggregators is easier than on a website because it is in a folder with headlines and maybe a short summary. On a website, you only get the benefit of news from that site and nowhere else. The folder contains news from more than ten resources, including blogs, news sites, and newsletters.

Any content can be syndicated. It is a matter of having the backend process in place, which depends on the application used to manage the content. If a site does not have such resources, there is content input software to create a file with the feed to publish it on the site.

Most aggregators have export capabilities, so the source can be shared with other people interested in the same topic. If you are interested in my security feeds, I can export them, in most cases, to an OPML file and you can import it into your aggregator.
Spam filters prevent readers from receiving newsletters or getting lost in the spam group. Offering a feed for the newsletter is a commitment.

Readers can get the content, only instead of it reaching the email inbox, it will do so through the aggregator. It is a way to avoid spam. Like everything else, it has its advantages and disadvantages:
Advantage:

• Filters cannot prevent the newsletter from reaching its destination.
• Recipient will get it – if the server is down, it will download next time and the email may be lost.
• The feed can be distributed by providing more exposure to your content.

Disadvantages:

• Trust readers to open aggregators like they open the email client, but some aggregators are integrated with an email client like NewsGator and there are online aggregators like Bloglines, which can be your home page.
• The metrics won’t be that comprehensive, but they’re still there through the links.
• It’s not as pretty as HTML-based newsletters.

If the feed is created automatically, what do you have to lose? You’re providing another way for your readers to get your content, just like you can get pizza in different ways: go to the restaurant, have it delivered, or make it at home. More apps are adding syndication capabilities, making the process easier. Some have said that they won’t read something unless you have a feed.

Layout works better than bookmarks. With bookmarks, you click on a site that might have the security information and go there to find that it does not. Then go back to the bookmarks to click on another site. Lather, rinse, repeat. With aggregators, you can’t jump from one site to another. Scan the headlines right there until you find what you need.

There was a time when we didn’t have the option to have pizza delivered to the door. When we are too tired, we know that we can trust the delivery man. In terms of content, expect to see it show up on your doorstep more often than the pizza boy, plus it’s cheaper and the cost only comes from the software, although there are plenty of free options available.

Syndication is here to stay and should be added to a company’s communication toolbox rather than replace it. Witness it, search for RSS, XML, RDF, and Atom.