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An exercise in clarity: RSS

30 Mar 2004 by Jason Fried

Explain RSS in 10 words or less to someone who reads news online (and a possibly few blogs although they may not necessarily know them as “blogs”), but doesn’t know what a newsreader or aggregator is.

50 comments so far (Post a Comment)

30 Mar 2004 | Keith said...

That's hard. How about:

"Syndication system that pulls content you choose from the Web."

30 Mar 2004 | UltraBob said...

Get the latest site updates without visiting the webpage.

30 Mar 2004 | Auntie Entity said...

Keep track of site updates in one convenient place.

30 Mar 2004 | Derek said...

Websites publish updates in a standard format; you can subscribe.

30 Mar 2004 | Derek said...

Or: "Read about money, airplanes, heroes, and microwave ovens, more conveniently."

30 Mar 2004 | Nathan Ridley said...

Standardized internet news format readable by personalizable news reading software

30 Mar 2004 | Daniel X. O'Neil said...

Get website updates right in your browser; works like email.

30 Mar 2004 | Scrivs said...

Makes life easier, but not really.

30 Mar 2004 | SL said...

Share and enjoy news updates from all over the world.

30 Mar 2004 | SL said...

Share and enjoy news updates from all over the world.

30 Mar 2004 | Adrian Holovaty said...

Get news automatically instead of visiting sites manually.

...or...

News comes to you. You don't have to gather it.

30 Mar 2004 | Tom said...

Really Simple Syndication makes the internet fun again. (hoo ray)

30 Mar 2004 | Marieke van Dijk said...

Define: Rss

30 Mar 2004 | Marieke van Dijk said...

Define: Rss

30 Mar 2004 | Ini said...

The Fastest Way To Waste An Enormous Amount Of Time

30 Mar 2004 | Geoff Ford said...

a format for delivering summaries of regularly changing web content

or What is RSS?

30 Mar 2004 | nicolas said...

In 10 words ?
That is what you need to get the hottest news.
;)

30 Mar 2004 | dmr said...

Yet another over-hyped internet technology that fails to deliver.
Yay!

30 Mar 2004 | Arne G said...

Freebasing for Web junkies.

30 Mar 2004 | noodlebrain said...

Readers Digest for the Web

30 Mar 2004 | Jason said...

If the WSJ redesigned the WWW, it'd look like RSS

30 Mar 2004 | crankysysadmin said...

Another cool thing to make stupid people mad.

30 Mar 2004 | Noah said...

Get breaking headline alerts without giving out your email address.

30 Mar 2004 | pb said...

Surpassed by Atom.

30 Mar 2004 | Gabriel Radic said...

Automatically generated updates list in an standard, machine-readeable format. Yes.

30 Mar 2004 | Jason Wall said...

Standardized list of machine readable information designed for news distribution.

30 Mar 2004 | beto said...

Ecstasy for information junkies that can't have enough of it.

30 Mar 2004 | George Hotelling said...

A list of everything new online since you last looked.

30 Mar 2004 | Sean Scott said...

RSS: a standardized format for broadcasting and sharing web journal data

30 Mar 2004 | One of several Steves said...

Remember Pointcast? Kinda like that, only actually useful.

30 Mar 2004 | Christian said...

getting flexible|desired news|information update notification without giving away any private data (i.e. email address)

30 Mar 2004 | ~bc said...

Your favorite sites' content delivered, without most formatting, on demand.

30 Mar 2004 | sarah gilbert said...

way for website owners to inform you of new content (11 words?

30 Mar 2004 | pb said...

Does *not* resemble PointCast in *any* way!

31 Mar 2004 | simplicity said...

forget email subscriptions - read the headlines without visiting every site

31 Mar 2004 | Matthew Oliphant said...

Another iteration of the customizable Web portal, yet without ads.

31 Mar 2004 | Matthew Oliphant said...

Annoyance; undermines my ability to know who read my site.

;)

31 Mar 2004 | Robb Beal said...

Auto-updated bookmarks with descriptions.

31 Mar 2004 | Gary Burke said...

An easy way to keep up with your favorite weblogs.

01 Apr 2004 | One of several Steves said...

Does *not* resemble PointCast in *any* way!

Does too!

Seriously, throw aside the interface aspects, and to me the similarities are definitely there. Subscribe to various information sources, have the information automatically fed to you in the background, and view it at your leisure. It's a classic push model, except you're in much more control of what's getting pushed to you.

01 Apr 2004 | Martin said...

What's with all these "in 10 words or less" excercises?

Are you guys getting bored?

01 Apr 2004 | Adam said...

Interesting to how RSS needs to be defined, compared to Atom having a site that's easy to understand...

http://atomenabled.org/

02 Apr 2004 | Lance Osborne said...

"List of items."

I say "items" because RSS can be used for more than just news.

In February, I gave a presentation about RSS to Marketing and Communications staff at my company. The audience was responsive to seeing real-world examples of RSS in use.

02 Apr 2004 | dthomas said...

What you want, when you want, how you want it.

02 Apr 2004 | David Czarnecki said...

Allows you to create your own virtual newspaper.

02 Apr 2004 | dj said...

Atom simplifies reading and writing on the Internet.

03 Apr 2004 | Danny said...

Polling metadata feeds automatically is easier than revisiting web sites.

03 Apr 2004 | Tjeerd Wiersma said...

Speed Reading the net.

13 Apr 2004 | Matt McAlister said...

News sent to your computer. No spam. No browsing.

14 Apr 2004 | Stephen Downes said...

Sends news you want to you, no email, no spam.

Comments on this post are closed

 
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