What is RSS for, exactly?

May 23, 2002 6:51 PM

So, I'm digging mefi's RSS feed, and it finally inspired me to find out what RSS is really about. The whole idea seems so strange to me, though -- can I really just grab the feed and put it on another website? My problem is that I've seen more examples of RSS feeds being offered than examples of RSS being used. I tried to check out Ben Brown's thing, but it looks broken. None of the other mentions of RSS here on MetaTalk helped answer my question.
posted by Eamon to Etiquette/Policy at 6:51 PM (15 comments total)

It just seems to me that if some person was copying and pasting MeFi posts on their own page, they would be denounced as a plagiarist -- but if the same person was just using MeFi's RSS feed to do the exact same thing (that is, displaying MeFi posts on their own page), it would be cool. Does RSS really work that way? When I read about RSS, there's always a reference to either my.netscape.com or my.userland.com, neither of which seems to shed any light on my quandary.
posted by Eamon at 6:57 PM on May 23, 2002

My take on it is that using the feed, the content still comes from the original site. If you're just copy/pasting, then who knows what you did to it. Theoretically, the feed is also presented as being from the original site, by use of some sort of header, or sticking it in its own little box in your layout, etc.

But yes, I've also seen many many more feeds than actual users of them. While I do think it's a neat idea, I sometimes wonder what the point of it is in some cases. I've started seeing a lot of personal sites now that are tossing up feeds of their own, and I just have to wonder WHY. Seems a particularly large leap of egotism to me.
posted by Su at 7:17 PM on May 23, 2002

Theoretically, the feed is also presented as being from the original site, by use of some sort of header, or sticking it in its own little box in your layout, etc.

I use this method (via moreover.com) to deliver the latest GLBT related news headlines to my site. I'm still learning/reading up on the whole RSS thing myself, but I do like the whole idea.
posted by gummi at 7:36 PM on May 23, 2002

RSS could be used by a desktop app to grab the top stories/posts off sites and deliver the headlines. I think the reason why there are so many feeds is because initially Netscape allowed sites to add their feeds to it's portal which could later be picked by other Netscape members and displayed in a box on their start page.
posted by riffola at 7:45 PM on May 23, 2002

If you're using OS X, SlashDock is the best example of the cool stuff that can be done with RSS feeds. I wish MeFi's feed looked better in it, but tons of other sites work perfectly.
posted by toddshot at 7:59 PM on May 23, 2002

an example of RSS in action can be seen at fyuze.com, which allows you to choose RSS feeds from a number of sites (mefi included) and view them all at the same time. effectively, it creates a personalized portal that allows you to at-a-glance see what sites have been updated. for example, you could monitor mefi, slashdot, kuru5hin, and the new york times all at once. when you see a story or post of interest, you can click on it and be taken to that site. RSS acts more as a pointer to content than content copying mechanism.
posted by ikarus at 9:50 PM on May 23, 2002

Some desktop apps to which riffola refers are AmphetaDesk (screenshots), Headline Viewer for Windows (screenshots), Radio UserLand (screenshot), and Blagg. RSS Monkey seems to work for other feeds. Me, I use my Radio news aggregator constantly.

NewsIsFree is the server-side aggregator I like, but there are others, like fyuze, O'Reilly Meerkat, and yay (sort of). Syndic8 is a database of RSS feeds. Search engine Snewp, Daypop's Headlines search, and Slash and Scoop sidebars use RSS feeds.

A lot of personal sites are putting out RSS feeds because blogging tools (like Movable Type, Blogger Pro, and Radio) make it so easy. Lastly, see also Ben Hammersley's book.
posted by markpasc at 10:15 PM on May 23, 2002

Of all of the desktop apps, I like feedreader best. The current (beta) version is 2.0 and seems to be quite stable and easy to use.

I wonder if there is a desktop aggregator that has the Blogger API built in?
posted by Dean_Paxton at 10:48 PM on May 23, 2002

Oh, and here is the link to RSS Monkey
posted by Dean_Paxton at 11:24 PM on May 23, 2002

Thanks for all the links, everyone. This should keep me busy for a while.

One thing I thought RSS would be useful for would be an implementation of a friends list, like the one found at LiveJournal. It's a feature that has always looked cool, but as a non-LiveJournal user, I missed out on it. Using RSS feeds, it seems that I could build something similar for my own site.

Once I check all of these links, I'll know if anything like this has been implemented already. If not, it'll keep me pretty busy.
posted by Eamon at 6:10 AM on May 24, 2002

Eamon, I primarily redid the RSS feed for Radio Userland users and so I could read the site from my OS X desktop, using MacReporter (google it for a screenshot, it's incredibly slick).

With RSS, you can reproduce a site on another server, NewsIsFree.com does this, and I once had a small spat with the owner over him displaying popunder ads and banner ads around metafilter content, but the popunders seem to be gone now.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:02 AM on May 24, 2002

I'm just surprised that siteowners with ads aren't complaining about losing revenue when somebody else displays their feed. I'm not complaining, mind, but it just seems that somebody would. What's your take on this, Matt? I'm surprised that there isn't a mechanism for including text ads in RSS streams.
posted by Eamon at 9:50 AM on May 24, 2002

"One thing I thought RSS would be useful for would be an implementation of a friends list, like the one found at LiveJournal. It's a feature that has always looked cool, but as a non-LiveJournal user, I missed out on it."

One of the things I have talked to a few people about at LiveJournal is making it so that external RSS feeds could be read in a "friends list" too. The tough part is always finding interested developers who want to help create these kind of features, but yeah... it's on the agenda.
posted by insomnia_lj at 10:46 AM on May 25, 2002

If a site owner is worried about people seeing their headlines without their front page ads, they have every right not to provide a feed. It'd be nice to have a more intermediate option, but it works so far.

In my experience, it's like TiVo: if you're getting Wired News headlines streamed to your aggregator, yeah, you aren't seeing the ads when you go to their front page, but you'll read more articles.

One can include (text) ads as items in the feed easily enough, as far as RSS and aggregators are concerned (that is, it's a matter of making the RSS-writing code do it).
posted by markpasc at 3:58 PM on May 25, 2002

One of the things I have talked to a few people about at LiveJournal is making it so that external RSS feeds could be read in a "friends list" too. The tough part is always finding interested developers who want to help create these kind of features, but yeah... it's on the agenda.

Syndic8 allows you to create and publish personal lists of your favorite RSS feeds (here's an example). You need to create an account and then subscribe to each feed of interest. There's a special page to help you get the code that you need to render your list inside of another page.

I apologize for the self-link, but this is in response to a direct question about a capability that people seem to be looking for.

posted by jeffbarr at 4:50 PM on May 25, 2002