Many people still don’t know what RSS can help them do. And some people don’t understand what RSS is for. With the emergence of real-time flows of information via social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, there has been a gradual decline of RSS Readers as a way for people to keep up with their favorite blogs or sites. Sure you can monitor news and information via Twitter or Facebook, but are you getting the information you really want? Do you have control over the flow of information? Do you still have to search for the information you need?
Anyone who has been frustrated at the time it takes to find what you want on the Internet can appreciate the time-saving feature of RSS. If there are web pages you visit daily or regularly – let’s say you always read the front page of The New York Times and your best friend’s weblog – RSS eliminate the need to check for updates. Every time something changes on the page, it comes to you. RSS always shows the most-recent changes.
One of the original uses for RSS is the ability to create a unique newspaper with new content waiting for you every morning. Beyond that, on the short list of things RSS can do is make it easy to search for and organize information about a particular topic, keep up with your kid’s homework, track packages, find cheap airfares or follow e-Bay auctions and sales. You can get your horoscope, search for jobs, read your favorite comics, get software updates, keep up with other people’s schedules and follow calendar listings for your favorite clubs and venues. You can see what others are saying about your favorite sports teams or keep up with what others are saying about your favorite (or least-favorite) celebrity. All without surfing through pop-up ads, slow downloads and poorly navigated sites. –whyRSS
RSS In Plain English
Here’s a short explanation of RSS and how it helps you save time reading the web…
Why RSS?
RSS is a quick and efficient way to read news and weblogs. RSS saves time. It’s as simple as that. And with RSS Readers fast evolving in terms of user experience, becoming more intelligent and more user-friendly (and social-friendly, too), RSS reading is now even better. Now you can organize, search, categorize and share RSS feed items. You can now create your own newspaper that you can read every morning, where you only read the headlines that you care about.
RSS still rocks! Do you RSS?