RSS and helping people subscribe to your blog…

Back in 2005 I wrote an article explaining what RSS was and how to use it. I then put a subscribe button on my blogs with a little help button next to it. See here for an example of the subscribe button, and see here for the article on RSS and subscribing.

It was a good idea, one which was the result of various conversations on various blogs – I can’t take credit for the concept, I think lots of people came up with the idea around the same time.

My article was liked by several people and can be seen even today on the site of friend and social media guru Tom Raftery.

Over time I lost sight of the importance of this approach, falling prey perhaps to echo-chamber-itus as RSS usage became standard in the tech industries. People who spend long hours chained to their computers for various reasons are now familiar with RSS, however recent conversations with people who use computers on a more casual basis have reminded me that RSS is still not widely understood.

And so I have updated my article and the buttons, and I am once again encouraging anyone who would like to edit and use them to do so. A link back to this site would be appreciated, but not obligatory

I decided that for the revised edition I would focus on Google Reader. I thought long and hard about this, but since a) it is the reader I currently use, b) it is extremely easy to use and the article is aimed at beginners in RSS, it just made sense.

So please have a look at the new article on subscribing to blogs, and my new buttons, and let me know what you think…

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 24th, 2008 at 9:08 am and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.