This morning I woke up to a slightly unfamiliar looking sky. The vapor trails were back, and in bigger numbers! The lifting of the UK flight ban must have caused a morning rush hour in the skies. The above picture was taken this morning from my phone at about 8:30am. Full Size photo available on Flickr.
Take a look at some of my favourite pictures taken around Bristol over the last 5 years. You can find them in the Code 9 photostream on Flickr.
Real Simple Syndication or RSS is the powerful web tool of the so-called ‘Web 2.0’ revolution that all Internet marketers and Webmasters should be using right now. RSS and Blogs are revolutionising the distribution of information to consumers, whether it is HTML, Flash or streaming video. This distribution channel provides a fantastic opportunity for marketers to connect directly and build bridges of trust and loyalty with their audience.
Many attribute the success of blogs to the technologies of RSS and Atom which enables subscribers to receive constantly updating feeds piped to their desktops via RSS readers, websites or applications. This form of distribution has an advantage over newsletters since it is not blocked by spam filters or lost in a sea of junk.
The use of RSS, mostly used today by the web savvy and businesses, is about to hot up with the new update of Internet Explorer 7 and Microsoft’s new operating system, Vista. IE7 will alert readers when RSS feeds are available and automate the subscription process, as Safari and Firefox do now. Microsoft’s endorsement of RSS could make it a mass-market technology within a few years making feed subscriptions as relied on as search engines.
A business effectively using RSS can bring new site visitors, increase search engine positioning, and generate product interest. As consumers become comfortable signing up to feeds from blog and news services, they are more likely to be comfortable with buying from these sources also.
Although RSS has been around for several years, it is still in the nursery phase, so business and commerce concepts, such as advertising inserted in RSS feeds or charging for subscriptions are just now starting to appear. Google and Yahoo are in the testing phase of pushing advertising through RSS that has excited marketing people, but horrified RSS purists, who feel that adverts clogging up these distribution channels are not the way to go.
Wherever the dust settles, consumer expectation will drive businesses that are slow to adopt. It is certain that RSS will become a standard, like email addresses and websites are now a “must” for businesses. RSS feeds will join their ranks.
The big consumer benefit to RSS is that consumers opt-in to content of interest, totally controlling the flow of information they receive. If the quality of the content in the feed declines, users simply remove the feed from their RSS reader and they will not receive any additional updates from that source. The RSS reader acts as an aggregator, allowing users to view and scan multiple content streams in a timely fashion.