RSS Tutorial

RSS and Blogs, Ezines, and Podcasts

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Summary

What is the relationship between RSS, Blogs, Ezines and Podcasts?

• Blogs and RSS are a natural fit, and many blogs have RSS feeds.
• RSS feeds and ezines can share the same purpose - to announce "what's new". They use different technologies. There are reasons to use both.
• A Podcast is an audio file that is enclosed in an RSS Feed.

Detail

Blogs

Blogs and RSS are a natural fit, so it is understandable that there is compatibility between Blogs and RSS.

• Blogs are created an entry at a time; RSS feeds are created an item at a time.
• Each blog entry becomes an RSS feed item showing "what's new".
• Most blog services automatically create RSS feeds.

Refer to the graph above:

Yellow - Some Blogs do not have RSS feeds.

• Some Bloggers do not care about RSS feeds.
• Some Bloggers do not know about RSS Feeds.

Green   - Many Blogs do Create RSS Feeds.

• The Google Blog search includes only the green set - every blog that publishes a site feed.

Orange - Some RSS feeds do not come from Blogs.

• Some RSS Feeds are created from websites.
• Some RSS Feeds are created without either a blog or a website.

Feeds vs. Ezines

RSS feeds and ezines have similarities. (Ezines are email newsletters or email magazines.)

• Both can be regular publications.
• Both usually link back to a website or blog.
• Both usually include "what's new" information.
• Both are usually used to generate more traffic to a website or blog.

Even though they have a similar purpose, they use very different technologies.

• Ezines are read as email.
• RSS Feeds are read with RSS Feed readers.

RSS is easier to administer than a newsletter or ezine, but RSS uses technology that is not as widespread as email.

Podcasts

What is podcasting and what does it have to do with RSS?

Podcasting is a method of publishing audio on the Internet using RSS.

The Podcast, usually an MP3 file,

• is recorded,
• up-loaded to the Internet,
• enclosed in an RSS feed file,
• read by an RSS feed reader, and then it can be
• listened to on the computer, or
• transferred to an IPOD or another MP3 player.

Podcasts are RSS 2.0 enclosures. It is comparable to an email attachment.

Podcasts are typically done regularly. Those that subscribe to an RSS feed with Podcasts are essentially subscribing to Podcasts.

The actual XML code would look something like this:

<enclosure url="http://www.biziii.com/podcast-play.php?20071022.mp3"
length="2553106" type="audio/mpeg" />

A Podcast is an RSS feed with an audio enclosure.