Online Advertising Operations: RSS

Thursday, May 24, 2007

RSS Versus Newsletter

Hint: RSS --- Newsletter Reloaded

My confusion all started when, I started to know what an RSS is. After exploiting it to a level , I was deeply confused, because we already have a similar service which is a "Newsletter", so what’s special about RSS

I carried out my analysis for quite a few days to find out

Let’s get to the analysis

RSS:A service which would allow one to subscribe for dynamic contents and can be later read through specialized applications(for details refer to my blog " RSS-Buzz Word ")

Newsletter: A service whereby dynamic contents such as news, offers,..can be sent to all the subscribed users as an email

I figured out certain differences, which would help us out to find out the difference between an RSS and a Newsletter

RSS	Newsletter
We based service through XML	Web based service through HTML
Datas are delivered to RSS readers and aggregators	Datas are delivered to email account subscribed
Contents would be crawled by spiders	Search engine cannot access Newsletters contents
Helps Websites, blogs,..to get good Search engine ranking	It doesn't helps to get good Search engine ranking
Increases website traffick	It does not increase website traffick
RSS feeds occupies lesser file size	Newsletters are normally bigger than RSS feeds
Spam free	Open to spam
Organising and reading Feeds are more user friendly	Organising and reading newsletters are not as user friendly as feeds
More secure way of communication	Less secure as you use your contact details such as email address
Lots of options in RSS Readers and aggreagotors to email and bookmark the updates	Options left based on your email account provider
Theres no specific storage size as such(unsure)	Storage size for newsletter depends upon the email service provider

The above few points must have thrown light on why RSS is becoming popular than Newsletter.If you know any other points to add or corrections pls let me know.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

RSS-Buzz Word

Isn't this icon familiar?

Online users these days frequently see something like this or wordings “Subscribe to RSS Feeds” on almost all websites and blogs. So, lets talk what’s the buzz about it

Everyone say, it is RSS, stands Really simple syndication in techies language an XML format

Initially I was one such victim who didn’t have any clue on how this logo help us and in what ways but I didn’t pay attention to it. when I frequently came across this, it provoked me to dig it. So I started digging to know what it is and what it is doing on all these websites, blogs, ………..

Readers, I won’t prefer to cover technical aspects of RSS, but rather I would explain everyone in a more basic internet users’s language.

Ok, let us imagine a service

Which automatically logs on to your favourite/interested websites, blogs,.. on our behalf and looking out for updates

Which would gather all the updates at one place making easy for us to read and organise

Which would also have utility options to send gathered contents as email, social bookmarking,..etc

All your above imaginations can be made live with the help of RSS. It is a service which would enable all the websites, blogs and anyother form on the internet which frequently changes its contents to update their users automatically.

How to make this service live?

We need the below two

RSS Feed URL of the websites/Blogs/……
RSS Readers/Aggregators

RSS Feed URL: These websites/blogs would program themselves which would generate RSS Feeds in a form of URL(E,g: http://rajaramachandran.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default), which is RSS Feed URL.Also we have separate software which would read our websites/blogs and generate RSS Feeds.

RSS Readers/Aggregators: It is a software where we can paste the RSS Feed URL, so this software begins to monitor the URL for changes and downloads the same to its storage space. Later on we can log on to the software and read.

Process Flow diagram

Yuk, resolution lacks.I spent time drawing so I won't give up.For clarity Click Here. This is a very very basic flow by which RSS contents are checked for updates and how it is read.

Few RSS Readers/Aggregators