RSS Feeds

I feel I should admit that I find RSS feeds a little confusing. I was first introduced to them officially in Information Provisions in the first week of this semester when I set up a Google reader account. I began adding different groups, but found it a bit difficult to find the organizations I was looking for through the Google Reader search tool. When I started looking further into RSS feeds for this project, I wanted to find something that had some very basic information about how they worked so that I could get the concept clearer in my head. For this purpose I found the HowStuffWorks entry on RSS very helpful. One of the main things I took from the first page of explanation was how to subscribe to feeds directly from the website of the organisation - which I found much clearer. I immediately went on to the Wheeler Centre website and found the RSS feed link, which then led me to another page that gave two different feeds to subscribe to, one for Upcoming Events and the other for Dallies. I followed the instructions and subscribed to both. In future, I think this is the best way to add feeds and I will keep an eye out on interesting sites for the little orange box.

http://wheelercentre.com/

http://wheelercentre.com/subscribe/rss-feeds

The ability to consolidate in the one spot all the different updates for websites that you are interested in has real benefits. It makes it easier for the person reading to be up-to-date with important items, and also for the organisation, website or group to maintain a connection with the people visiting the site. On HowStuffWorks, in his piece RSS Reader, Chris Pollett, however, does make the important point that, while Feed Readers can save time on the internet, they can also become unmanageable if you subscribe to too many site and then end up with a vast amount feeds to sift through. It may, therefore, be a challenge to organisations to make their RSS Feeds something that somebody would want to subscribe to - whether this means making sure that they send out feeds regularly or maybe making sure that the feeds are tallied towards their intended audience.

With Google Reader ending in July this year - a topic that abounds on the Internet at the moment - I have moved my small subscription list from Google Reader to Feedly. This was not as simple as I thought because I wanted to try and find away to do it that did not require me giving Feedly access to my Google account.  I had previously used Google's Takeout service (following the instructions on Mashable's "How to Export Your RSS Feeds From Google Reader") to download the details of my subscription list and was ready to import them into another reader. However, I discovered this was not the way it worked - in fact, I couldn't set up a different account for Feedly. When I clicked create account, it took me to a screen that showed me how to set up a Google account. I then clicked that I already had one, but it wouldn't bring that account up. This happened because previously I had clicked that I would not allow it to access my account. It was a bit of a cycle, until I caved and just clicked Allow and suddenly all of the feeds that I had subscribed to were in place.

One of my Category Boxes on Feedly

I do like the layout of Feedly - better than Google Reader actually, as I find the layout easier to navigate as I am a visual person. I think this means that I will be more likely to use it than Google Reader, which I found a bland interface to interact with. I have also organized my feeds into different categories - which I found worked rather like the different boards on Pinterest (I have just started a Pinterest account to explore how it works).

Altogether, I find RSS feeds interesting - I like the way that the feeds in Google Reader and Feedly have more detail in them than Twitter posts and that they are a way of staying up-to-date without the concurrent social media aspect - although for organizations, libraries and information services included, I think both tools are very valuable as the combination provides ways of both showing what they do and encouraging people to interact with them.