Uses of RSS

There are quite a lot of uses for RSS so it is time to put down some RSS facts so you know what you can and can't do with RSS.

RSS Feeds

The most obvious use of RSS is the RSS feed. Feeds first appeared for blogs when blogging platforms were given the ability to produce feeds. Most bloggers did not realise they even produced a feed in the early days now everyone knows.

Since the early days the use of RSS for feeds has become more diverse. Sites that are not blogs are now offering feeds of there written content.

Updates via RSS

It is not uncommon for sites that are almost entirely automated to produce feeds. You can find feeds for video posting sites such as YouTube where they provide an RSS feed for things like new content and most viewed videos.

Many entertainment sites such as arcades and funny flash sites also provides feeds so other sites can syndicate their content or uses can be notified as soon as new content has been added.

RSS announcements

I call them announcements but this also covers reminders. Some of the more useful sides of RSS are announcement and personal feeds, stuff you need to know but don't always remember. A few examples of this include lottery results and birthday reminders.

RSS auto responders

Taking RSS a step further you can use RSS to deliver auto responder messages. An auto responder messages is a series of messages such as a training or informational course where messages need to be delivered at intervals over a period of time.

Personal and public feeds

All of the above examples cover two types of RSS, personal and public. Public feeds are the most common and cover blog and site feeds. These are feeds that anyone can subscribe to and contain the same information.

Personal RSS feeds are individual to a particular person such as a reminder feed or autoresponder feed. These are feeds that only one individual is subscribed to and the content will most often only be relevant to them.

I have covered only a fraction of the uses of RSS here but hopefully it will spark your imagination and give you some ideas on how you can make better use of RSS.