RSS Feeds in Plain English

So I haven't talked about RSS feeds in a while (mostly because I haven't been very good at it thus far).

Most blogs and many regular Web sites have feeds (one common type is called RSS); when you subscribe to a site's feed (using a program or Web site called a feedreader), you get updated whenever the site posts new content.

In the AOL Journals universe, we mainly use Alerts for this. However, Alerts tends to get unwieldy when you start subscribing to lots and lots of alerts. (For example, if you subscribe to the New Entry Alerts for 100 Journals, if every one of your subscribed blogs posts an entry, that's 100 e-mails.)

Also, if you use a feedreader, you can get updates on all the blogs you want to read (both AOL & non-AOL blogs and Web sites).

Anyway, I was looking in my own RSS feedreader (on my Mac at work, I use the free NetNewsWire Lite, though as I've mentioned before, my feeds are a mess, spread out all over the place), and saw that Frank Gruber, a product manager over here as well as profilic blogger in his own right, has an entry about a great, plain English demo about RSS Feeds.

It's a three-and-a-half-minute Flash video done by the people at Common Craft: "RSS in Plain English":

Click to play the video.

It's a pretty good tutorial (though I would add, in addition to Bloglines, Newsgator and Google Reader, you can also use My AOL for your feedreading needs -- I talked to JC on the Feeds team and confirmed that your feeds are now tied to your screen name when you're signed in, which means it'll remember the feeds you've added even after you clear your cookies. That was kind of deal-breaker before).

Anyway, take a look at the video and let me know if that helps explain to you what feeds and feedreaders do.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: feeds, rss readers, feedreaders, my aol