Keeping Track of It All: RSS and Aggregators
The continuing evolution and expansion of all things internet is nothing new. Search engines, e-commerce and online entertainment options bloomed, spread their vines and became mainstays inside a year’s time.
Now we’re in the midst of the Social Media Revolution, which once again promises to change the way we do everything. And just like the first internet revolution, businesses that adapt and adopt the right tools will better their chances of survival.
Staying on top of the latest online developments takes a lot of time, but with a little advance work your hunting and gathering can be made more efficient and focused on the daily topics most important to you.
Collecting RSS feeds is an easy way to start. RSS is a syndication method that allows users to 'subscribe' to a website. RSS feeds display as a simplified index of recent postings, allowing you to quickly check updates from the sites you subscribe to. RSS does not require an e-mail address for subscription, which appeals to consumer privacy concerns. If your browser doesn’t make it simple for you to subscribe to RSS feeds (most do, check your Help section for RSS) you can set up a page at iGoogle.
Aggregators like iGoogle or Netvibes can simplify your information gathering and take it a giant leap forward. An aggregator will bring your RSS feeds into a dashboard that also displays Twitter updates, Facebook accounts, email, local news and weather, stocks, and hundreds of other social media and news updates. Best of all, most aggregators are user-friendly and will import your existing account settings and guide you through the process. Once you're set up, everything will be right before you on one page, which makes keeping up a lot easier and will likely lead you to new information sources.