Users Subscribe To and Share RSS Feeds While On-The-Go
Feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the Internet? Feeling left behind on the latest up-to-the-minute web content updates? Ever wonder how you can stay up-to-date and organized in your quest for information relevancy while avoiding information overload? One easy way to stay in the loop is to manage how you receive web content updates is by subscribing to RSS Feeds.
Social media guru Julia Roy proclaimed on her blog “A Digital Girl” that feed readers are the only efficient way to consume content on the web. RSS Feeds and Readers allow users to subscribe to and receive web content updates in real-time. Some common types of web content that users may utilize Really Simple Syndication or RSS Feeds for include news and entertainment web sites and blogs. RSS Feeds allow users the freedom to keep up with the frequent content updates without having to constantly re-visit the web sites—once the user subscribes to the web site, RSS Feeds generate updates to the user’s RSS Reader.
Besides just providing a service to help users to keep up with the rapid pace of the Internet, RSS Feeds can potentially give users an edge. If a user wants to keep up with an organization’s job postings, for example, receiving instant RSS Feed updates of the organization’s web site could provide the user with the advantage over a user who chooses to casually visit the organization’s web site for updates.
RSS Readers or aggregators are numerous and varied, but one of the most popular and easy-to-use RSS Readers is Google Reader:
Google Reader allows users to subscribe to web sites and keep track of content updates in one organized place on the web. Some features of Google Reader include:
• Users have the ability to share their RSS Feeds and individual articles with other users
• Users have the ability to organize content using folders and tagging
• Google Reader recommends content based on users’ subscriptions
• Google Reader is available as a mobile application, allowing users to stay up-to-date while on-the-go
• Google Reader is free and intuitively user-friendly
Feedly Reader allows the user to quickly and easily sync their Google Reader RSS Feeds into its sleek, magazine-like interface:
Subscribing to RSS Feeds is as easy as copy and paste! Just go to your favorite web site, look for the RSS Feed icon, and click. In many cases, the RSS Feed screen will appear and the user will be able to copy the RSS Feed address or URL from the address bar in the browser, and then paste the RSS Feed URL into their RSS Reader’s subscription section.
Some web sites provide RSS Feeds for all content and other web sites provide RSS Feeds for specific content:
BBC News offers their users three options for subscribing to their RSS Feeds:
For users on-the-go, RSS Feeds are available for various mobile platforms. Accessibility is dependent on the user’s mobile device. The process for users to receive RSS Feeds on their mobile devices typically involves downloading an RSS Reader application from the user’s mobile device service provider and synching their existing RSS Feed account(s) with their mobile account. The Verizon Android Smartphone provides many tie-ins to Google services and applications, making accessibly to Google Reader and RSS Feeds particularly seamless.
