Blog 4: What is RSS

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (among other things that aren't important). RSS is a feed through the Web that allows people to hook in to frequently updated sites for our purposes blogs. It shoots out the updates through a RSS reader to either e-mail, homepage, or the reader. The amount of text being delivered is controlled by the blogger. As the blogger you can allow people to see the full text, clips or titles. The most common tool used is called Feeburner from what I can tell.

To find out about Feedburner just go to feedburner.com. They have a little pop-up that allows you to see how many people subscribe to your RSS. As per John Chow I am not going to show my RSS feed as I only have two subscribers. Unfortunately, I am one of them. If only I had a hundred or so close friends and family members I could get to become RSS feeds.

Why is RSS important? It helps you get better rankings in terms of the search engines, and shows that you are important. You can also try to make money using them but apparently the yare hard to monetize. Google's purchase of Feedburner should assist pretty soon, and with that will come more methods. The major bloggers all support RSS subscriptions.

As a side note go visit Mark Cuban at http://www.blogmaverick.com/.