RSS Feeds – Are they just a gimmick?

I mentioned RSS feeds in the Quick guide to creating a web 2.0 site blog post. But, I have never really experienced them, and to be honest I personally thought they were a bit of a gimmick and pretty pointless.

So I decided to set myself the task of finding out what they are and what they do. Then letting you, the readers know my findings.

Since doing my research and signing up to quite a few I take it all back, they are not just a gimmick and nor are they pointless. I will explain to you all why.

What are RSS Feeds?

A basic explanation – RSS feeds are simply a format for delivering regularly changing web content (web pages). You will find most RSS feeds on news related sites, weblogs and other online publishers. They syndicate their content as an RSS Feed that you can sign up to receive.

Take the LCN Blog for example, you will see that you can subscribe to our RSS feed to be kept up to date with entries added to our blog. Anywhere you see the RSS feed icon means you can subscribe to it.

It’s a very simple process all you have to do is click on the icon and accept the subscription. It will now be added to your RSS Feeds list found on your browser.

I am using Internet Explorer 7, here is an example:

Ok so we now know what an RSS feed is, now I want to find out what feeds I can subscribe to and how useful will they really be.

To start with I decided to sign up to some news feeds, BBC, SKY etc. Once added I checked my feeds on my browser and could see when hovering over them with my mouse, that some of the news feeds had been updated with new stories. It stated how many new stories had been added and when. Next to the feed I found a refresh button which would then check for new stories and update the information.

I then clicked on my BBC news feed and was directed to a web page showing me all the new data. I was slightly surprised, I expected to be sent to the news website where I would have to look for the news stories. Instead I was re-directed to an rss webpage showing me all the new news stories. It was simply laid out and easy to scroll down to an article of interest. Once you find an article you wish to read further you are then sent to the website, but it takes you to exact page of the story.

Since my first experience I have since added many RSS Feeds and find them very useful, especially the news feeds. I highly recommend trying them, they may not be for everyone but well worth checking out.