NOTE: This is part 3 of a 12-part CONTENTIOUS tutorial, What Are Webfeeds (RSS), and Why Should You Care? (Full table of contents available on that main page.)
Most webfeeds (often called RSS feeds) contain just a small amount of overview-style content. This means you can peruse a webfeed far more quickly than you can browse a Web site.
It gets better. You probably won’t just read just one webfeed – rather, you’ll probably maintain a list of several webfeeds from your favorite sites. It requires far less time to scan the contents of, say, a dozen feeds than to individually visit and scan the same number of Web sites. This way, if (like most people) you have limited time for Web browsing you can check your feed reader to quickly learn what your favorite sites have on offer, and zip straight to the items that interest you most.
More webfeed advantages…
By reading webfeeds you gain at least a cursory overview of everything new on your favorite sites, even if you don’t have time to visit any of them. It becomes less likely that you’ll miss something truly interesting or important.
DON’T E-MAIL NEWSLETTERS OFFER THOSE SAME ADVANTAGES?
Yes, many Web sites offer opt-in e-mail newsletters to alert you about their new content. However, the plague of spam is steadily killing the effectiveness of e-mail publishing. Webfeeds are not only more orderly and time-efficient than e-mail newsletters – they’re also completely spam-proof! (More on this…)
WEBFEEDS ARE IDEAL FOR DIALUP USERS
Although broadband Internet access is proliferating steadily, at this point the majority of Web users around the world use slow dialup Net access. For these people, surfing the Web always involves a lot of waiting. However, webfeeds are low-bandwidth and thus download very quickly, allowing a dialup user to quickly check the content of dozens of sites in seconds rather than minutes or hours. (I wrote another article about this.)
If you liked my post, feel free to subscribe to my rss feeds
BlogoSquare