CONTENT SYNDICATION RSS Aggregators and Benefits to
Visitors.
By:Vivek Agrawal
TOC
Concept – Content Syndication
Content Syn. With RSS
Best RSS Aggregators
Benefits of RSS feeds to visitors
Content Syndication
Syndication is a way of supplying material so that others can reuse or integrate them with other material.
Content Syndication is all about syndicating content. This means you supply your content to others which they use, reformat it and supply further ahead to the next level or readers.
Example - Newspapers
Newspapers syndicate content such as comics, horoscopes, crossword puzzles, etc.
Content provides supply them these and then they are reformatted as required, integrated and then published for its readers.
Content Syn. With RSS
RSS is Really Simple Synidation
It is a standardized dialect that allows content from one site to be syndicated by another.
It helps your visitors to receive the updates about the new articles or news from your site.
Content Syn. With RSS Cont…
It is a free and easy way to promote a site and its content.
It uses a subscription method which then authorizes the subscriber to view the updates
Most importantly - RSS helps the subscribers as well as the content publishers.
RSSAGGREGATOR
S
RSS Aggregators
RSS Aggregators are software programs that allow you to subscribe to RSS feeds and then read the updates.
There are numerous RSS aggregators present at your service.
They can be distinguished by the services and ease of use and access they provide.
Aggregators
Google Reader
Bloglines
Sharp Reader
Awasu
FreeDemon
Omea Reader
Google Reader
Google Reader is a powerful online RSS feed aggregator.
Apart from displaying the new feeds, it allows you to share feed posts with your
friends, find out the most popular
feeds, keep track of what you have
read and what not, etc.
Bloglines
Bloglines is a free online news aggregator.
It allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds of your choice.
It offers many ways by which you can organize and manage your RSS feed subscription.
Sharp Reader
Sharp Reader is a Windows based free RSS/Atom aggregator.
It comes with lot many useful features such as
threading support which allows you to view connected items together in a threaded fashion
feeds settings such as refresh rate and time-out which can be set per feed or per category.
Awasu
This is yet again a wonderful and a very powerful RSS feed reader with lot many options that others do not posses.
The most important feature of this tool is that it allows easy use and manages for both casual and professional users.
FreeDemon
FreeDemon is a Windows based free RSS feed aggregator that allows you synchronize items between office, home and anywhere else you might go.
Most importantly, it allows you to assign tags to various items which make it easy for you to classify and locate items you have previously read.
Omea Reader
Omea Reader is a free and easy to use windows based RSS Reader and Newsgroup aggregator.
To mention one of the wonderful features, this aggregator integrates with the browser so that you can subscribe to feeds as and when you come across directly from the browser
Newz Crawler
NewzCrawler is a wonderful windows based RSS feed client which retrieves for you news from various sources and displays them to you in views of your choice.
It offers you various options such as synchronize, email, search, and many more.
BENEFITS OF RSS FEEDS
TO VISITORS
RSS for Visitors
RSS feeds bring lot more advantage and benefits for website visitors.
The most benefitted are those with quest of information and knowledge.
RSS feeds delivers them at their door.
Benefits for Visitors
Saves time
Remain updated
Multiple RSS from single page
Read condensed information first
Classify into categories.
SPAM Free
Saves time
Saves your valuable time which can be used for some other useful work.
Subscribe to the website’s RSS feed using your favorite RSS reader.
Simply visit your reader account to find new posts. The reader will list for you the new posts if any.
Remain Updated
Subscribing to an RSS feed enables the subscriber to receive all the new updates from the website in the category he has subscribed to.
This way he can make sure that he doesn’t miss upon any important article or news or post from that website.
Multiple RSS on Single Page
Subscribe to many feeds and manage all of them from a single page .
Some other useful features include tagging and emailing.
Read Condensed Info First
You don’t need to read to read the whole article to know its usefulness.
Just read the condensed information. Only if you get interested in the topic, read further.
Classify Into Categories
Classify various feeds into different categories.
Look for a particular type of information in specific categories.
Adds on to the initial ease of finding content of your interest
SPAM Free
RSS feeds contain SPAM free information.
You are not prone to attacks and other risks which are very easy with emails.
RSS feeds are simple XML documents.
References
http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid26_gci498311,00.html
http://www.rss-syndication.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_syndication