Comments on: What Is RSS?

By: Jeff Davis

Jeff Davis — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 22:01:14 +0000

I once heard someone say RSS is like setting the buttons on your car radio to stations you like. Once set, it’s simple to receive the content (music, talk, news) that you want. Similar concept to RSS.

Also, when will RSS join PDF? Few people know what the letters P, D and F actually stand for, yet everyone uses the term and understands what the end result is. RSS will eventually get there, but now it’s confusing to the beginners - it’s not “really simple,” and what do you mean by “syndication?” they ask. Use the car radio (or Shannon’s magazine publisher) example and they get it.

By: links for 2008-03-03 « media mindshare: news media, technology & public relations

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 03:33:11 +0000

[...] What is RSS? DaveFleet.com Excellent primer on RSS from Dave Fleet, including link to CommonCraft video on YouTube. [...]

By: Searching for the PR potential in RSS « PR Voyageur

Searching for the PR potential in RSS « PR Voyageur — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 00:39:37 +0000

[...] few Toronto PR bloggers - including Dave Fleet and Ed Lee - have recently posted some great plain language explanations to help me better [...]

By: Shannon Whitley

Shannon Whitley — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 19:26:06 +0000

Thanks for taking the time to distill this into something simple. I guess it’s ironic that the word ’simple’ is part of the name and yet it takes some thinking to ‘get’ the concept.

I like to talk about RSS in terms of magazine subscriptions. The way we use the web today, going out to each website, is a little like visiting each magazine publisher’s headquarters to read their articles. We don’t do that in the real world. We subscribe to the magazines and they show up at our door. That’s how RSS works. The content is delivered right to us from many sources. We no longer have to visit each source to find and read the content that interests us.