blogging 102

Reading time: 5 – 8 minutes Despite all the hype and fuss surrounding RSS recently, for the majority of mainstream Internet users, RSS still remains a mysterious orange button sitting on your web site. They are totally unaware of this new method of syndicating information on the web. This is not necessarily bad news! For many Internet users are enjoying the benefits of RSS while remaining totally clueless as to its function or how it works. Programs like ‘MyYahoo’ and the RSS empowered Firefox Browser are letting surfers access RSS and enjoy its major benefits without having any or no knowledge of it. In the very near future when Microsoft introduces its new RSS powered Longhorn Browser and operating system – this situation will hopefully continue. Internet users should be able to enjoy all the benefits of RSS without having to know what it is! Users don’t have to know ‘DOS’ or even ‘HTML’ to enjoy the full benefits of the Internet... 

Reading time: 6 – 9 minutes We were waiting for something like this to happen for a long time. Yahoo!, one of the key providers of mass-market RSS aggregators, finally took a step forward and published their RSS whitepaper, covering their own findings with RSS, based on their usage data. 1. YAHOO!’S KEY FINDINGS Let’s first take a look at Yahoo! key findings and what they mean for marketers. a] Awareness of RSS is quite low among Internet users. 12% of users are aware of RSS, and 4% have knowingly used RSS. Although RSS awareness is increasing, only few internet users yet understand what RSS is and how to use it. For marketers, this means that simply placing an RSS button on their site it not nearly enough, with the report finally demonstrating that marketers needs to use clear and persuasive copy to get their visitors interested in RSS, explain RSS to them and get them to subscribe to their feeds. In addition it also shows that marketers need to make sure they are using...