I am continually amazed at how many leading sites fail to recognise the importance of RSS as a vital method of communicating with their customers. One site that continues to amaze me is the New Zealand e-Bay clone, Trade Me. Why don’t they have RSS feeds setup to notify users of new trades being put up? If you are looking to buy something in particular, or have an interest in a particular area, receiving an RSS feed directly to your computer of new products being sold would be so much easier than trawling through the site on a regular basis and potentially missing something.

In many ways RSS feeds are the most important technology of the Web 2.0 era. They allow users to consumer a huge amount of information, quicker and at their own speed. They are more effective than email as they can be often filtered and setup to exactly match the consumers interests. I have unsubscibed to so many newsletters as they in general only have one article I am interested in and the rest amounts to rubbish. With RSS feeds I can receive information from a great many sources and quickly scan through for the stuff that is relevant to me.

Most websites would have RSS feeds setup of relevant information that is updated regularly. The challenge is in identifying what is relevant to your users, what they are likely to want to receive regularly from you and building your feeds around this information. Of course, in forums, news sites and blogs this is easy. Those interested in your blog will receive a feed of new postings and in some cases on very highly active sites - even comments.

It is of course harder to identify what your users might be interested in on travel sites where the content is not changing greatly from week to week, perhaps hot deals and specials will work. Nonetheless, for the rest of the sites out there such as Trade Me (and one of my favourite Sports Geek sites - Sportzhub), get onto RSS feeds - you are only frustrating your users!

In many of my recent speaking engagements I have referred to RSS in some cases even branding them “the new email marketing”. But increasingly I am getting the asked the same questions - what are RSS feeds and how do I set them up on my computer.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS is a time-saving way for you to receive constantly updated news and information (often called “RSS feeds”, “news feeds” or simply “feeds”) from your favorite Web sites and blogs. By using RSS you can stay on top of the news and information you need without using your e-mail system and without repeatedly checking multiple Web sites to see if they have been updated. RSS simplifies the way you stay informed and helps you take control of overloaded email inboxes.

Typically RSS feeds consist of headlines and short summaries of new articles, blog entries or search results, though some Web sites and blogs offer the full text of articles or blog entries as feeds.

To receive RSS feeds, three things are necessary:
1) The Web site or blog that you wish to receive feeds from must offer feeds.
2) You must have a feed reader, and
3) You need to select the feeds you wish to receive.

Choosing which feed reader you prefer is probably the most daunting as there are just so many freely available. The best starting point is probably your Intenet browser, as Internet Explorer 7 (the latest version), Safari for Apple Mac, and Firefox all have RSS readers built into them. Alternatively you can download feed-reader software to your desktop or register with a free Web-based feed reader such as Yahoo.com, Bloglines.com, Google Reader or Newsgator.com. One of the advantages of web-based alternatives is that you receive all your feeds in one place regardless of which computer you are using.

With the Web-based feed readers, the process of signing up for feeds can be quite simple. After you’ve registered with the feed reader Web site, you enter the URL of the feed you wish to receive into the feed reader, and a few clicks later you ready to receive and read feeds.

As an example, go to www.bloglines.com. Complete the simple registration process and then click on the My Feeds tab. Then click on the “add” link on the left. On the right you’ll be presented with a space for the Web site or feed URL. Enter feed://xebidy.com/?feed=rss2 for Xebidy blog feed. Bloglines then lists our feed. Click subscribe and the feed will then be listed on the left. You can now setup as many as you want - say your newspaper headings, some forum sites you are interested etc. Come back to Bloglines whenever you want to check for updates.

To make it even easier for you an orange symbol has become synonomous with RSS feeds and usually clicking on this or the associated links will provide you with the URL of the feed to paste into your chosen reader. In this months coming article I will be discussing RSS feeds in a bit more detail as we look into some of the technologies that are making up the phenomenon of Web 2.0 and next month we will apply some of these to get a theory of Travel 2.0. In coming months we will do a complete feature on RSS feeds and some of the unique initiatives you might be able to capitalise on. Look out for these or better still subscribe to our feeds and have them delivered to your desktop.