Monday, October 13, 2008

RSS


As someone who once prided herself as being a technology junkie, I'm embarrassed of who I have become. It seems as though once I started college, I stopped updating myself on the latest and greatest technologies (facebook aside). Therefore, although I have seen the RSS symbol on a majority of the websites I read daily (don't be too impressed, they include PerezHilton and People) I had absoultly no idea how useful RSS was until last week, when Dr. Waters forced me to learn in COM 639. So, don't be too critical as you read the following post as it may contain a few errors.
First, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS saves valuable time by directly feeding updated information to users via their reader. Users can subscribe to their favorite websites via their reader and login in to one website for all their media content, instead of having to visit each site individually.
If I was currently in the field of public relations, I would be overjoyed by the discovery of RSS. It allows practioners to save valuable time doing environmental scanning for their clients. Instead of spending hours checking websites for relevant information, they can simply subscribe to all relevant websites and news sources and check-in throughout the day to make sure all is well. For example, if I was the poor unfortunate soul representing Britney Spears during her meltdown last year an RSS subscription to People or PerezHilton would have streamed continous updates from which I could craft strategies from. Thus keeping me ahead of the pace, which might have prevented the infamous ambulance shot.

3 comments:

krseRN said...

I was the same way! I had seen that symbol everywhere, but had no idea RSS even existed. I even have gmail with reader and hadn't bothered to figure out what it did. How does that happen? I think it is awesome we are learning this now because it is obvious how much ahead of the game we can potentially be if we stay up to date with these kind of technologies. I think this is a perfect example of how just having a slight edge over another organization can be critical. I am definitely going to have to keep myself more educated on these new opportunities!!!

KC said...

I enjoyed your post because I too am not a PR person and the sites I see the RSS button on are quite possibly some of the same sites as you frequent. My first experience was also a week ago when I found it extremely hard to focus in class when Dr. Waters introduced us to RSS. I spent the rest of the time with my eyes glued to the screen amazed with how much information was practically being beemed to me at a record pace. I liked the post. I can realte.

Jameser said...

Maggie,

I can "one up" you. I didn't even realize that there was an RSS symbol until it was pointed out in class. Even worse, I realized just how little I surf the Internet anymore because there are very few sites that I even can think of requesting an RSS feed to.

-James