Feeding the Masses

I'm really impressed with all of the ways that RSS can be used.  As I mentioned in my blog last week, I already had an idea of what RSS was without really using it (although, as many of us have commented, Facebook provides steady feeds for many of its applications, and I AM an avid Facebook user!).  But I never knew that it's RSS technology and applications like FEED2JS that cause things such as weather updates on personal blogs and websites to operate.  It's really amazing what RSS can do for people.  You can share your favourite feeds with anyone who has access to your personal page, which in turn could make your readers aware of those feeds and subscribe to them as well, thus increasing the subscription rates of various feeds, and so on and so on.  It's word-of-mouth...but Internet style!!  I can now really see some of the ways how the terms "social software" and "social networking" are truly appropriate for this new wave of interaction.

I also love the ways in which EBSCO and ProQuest are using feeds to share updates with their users, and that they encourage users to post their feeds to personal websites (such as ProQuest's library example).  Instead of users having to go and search out for these feeds themselves, they can simply go to their local public library's or academic library's webpage to see updates in topics their interested in.  The various possibilities that RSS technology can be manipulated are truly endless!

Just to conclude, I can now say that I am a very happy Google Reader user and add at least one new feed to it every day!  And I am constantly on the lookout for new feeds to add.  It's a real time saver and has made catching up on news in the mornings a lot easier!!