What is RSS, and Why Should You Care?

Amy Gahran, self described writer, editor & trainer has an excellent tutorial on RSS syndication on her blog. The tutorial is presented in 12-parts:

1. Introduction: What’s New Online?
2. How Most Webfeeds Work
3. Main Advantage: Webfeeds Save You Time
4. Getting Started: You Need a Feed Reader
5. Subscribing to Webfeeds
6. Finding Good Webfeeds
7. For Publishers: Why Webfeeds Beat E-mail Newsletters
8. Publishing Your Own Webfeed
9. Content: What to Put on Your Webfeed
10. Webfeed Disadvantages
11. Why Do I Say “Webfeed” Rather than “RSS?”
12. The Big Picture for Webfeeds

Dennis Kennedy, from whose blog I found Amy Gahran’s tutorial, pulled out what may be the most relevant excerpt for you as a lawyer. RSS/Synidication/Webfeed plays two key roles:

• First, it’s a publishing channel for delivering announcements of what’s new on a site, or other kinds of messages or content, to an online audience.
• Second, it’s a syndication channel that makes it easy for other sites to find or even republish a site’s content.

Played well, these roles can vastly extend the audience for a site’s content.

Take a look at Amy Gahran’s tutorial. It may be the best piece out there on syndication.