What is the Best Way to Explain RSS Feeds?
I recently demonstrated social networking and social media concepts to a group of professionals via a special version of this blog. I showed among other things how easy it is to locate RSS feeds and subscribe to them as well as the various ways you can view them. I even showed how easy it is to see what Netflix DVDs I have at home, courtesy of a special RSS feed.
In retrospect I realize how confusing this topic can be to some. One issue is that there are so many ways to display feed lists and the feeds themselves. Just looking at my own setup I regularly use the following, all of which show something different:
- Netvibes (which can display individual feeds in separate boxes on tabbed pages)
- Wizz (as a Firefox extension that opens up a list in the left side of the Firefoz screen)
- Google Reader (which involves going to the Google Reader web site and logging in).
- As a scrollable within-web-page list (e.g., via GRAZR feed)
These approaches show both the strengths and weaknesses of the RSS technology. The strength is in the variety of publishing and subscription options it gives to people.
One downside is that a feed can look very different depending on what approach you use to view it. Some approaches are barebones and display pages in a rather crude fashion. For some uses this may be appropriate. Other approaches render and display an RSS feed in a well-organized and attractive fashion, complete with graphics and other media elements; Netvibes is very good for this. I also like the way that Firefox displays feed pages individually.
I can see how the variety of rendering and display methods might seem a bit confusing. As the producer you can never be completely certain what the person at the other end will see. In some cases some of the effort you put into page composition, even page composition designed for web browser display, could go for nought.
That’s the reality of the web, but at minimum this does provide an extra challenge to how you explain such things to novices.
I’d like to figure out a good way to do this without getting into too many details of the technology and underlying standards and data models. Can someone point me to something that might help? If you like, please leave a comment below.
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Click on the “RSS” tag below to see related posts.
Dennis D. McDonald
in Blogging, Web 2.0, RSS, Social Media
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Reader Comments (5)
http://cravingideas.blogs.com/backinskinnyjeans/2006/09/how_to_explain_.html
RSS is such an incredible, disruptive and useful technology once you wrap your mind around it. Actually, scratch that, I've never quite wrapped my mind around it because I don't get the nitty-gritty's. What I do get, is that the only way to 'learn' RSS is to play, or experiment with it. And that is how I explain it - very practically. There are two things I include in any Web2.0-type preso - a demo of how to set up a free del.icio.us account and a demo of how to set up a free Bloglines account. Bloglines only because I find end users favouring the interface.
Other than that, really non-techie users find it helpful (in my experience) to compare it to a magazine subscription (or subscriptions) except that each article is sent to you as it is published on whatever platform you choose.
Hope that helps as a low-end strategy.
That explanation is a great one! The part where I still have trouble, though, is how to explain the fuzzy line between displaying the original web page with a standard browser, and displaying the web page within the feed reader iteslf. The RSS ecosystem extends far beyond individual and aggregated headlines and in some cases provides the ability to bypass the web page entirely to substitute for it the page as displayed by the feed reader.
That's the part I have the difficulty explaining. I think explaining it is easier with groups that are data-oriented and already familiar with separating the concept of data (as content) from data formatting and data presentation (on a page or standard sized screen).
One positive aspect of this situation is that it is familiarizing us with a web environment where one must plan for alternative ways of providing access not only to metadata (via outlines, lists, keywords, and headlines) but also to data (as pages or data chunks displayed on not only standard computers but also UMPC's, wireless PDA's, and smartphones).
Thanks for commenting!
- Dennis
I agree with the benefits of actually showing the process. Perhaps an approach to help audiences keep track would be to start with a sample page and then show how all the tools we are talking about relate to this given page and how it can be linked to, rendered, searched for, indexed, bookmarked, commented on, etc. etc.
Thanks for commenting!
- Dennis