RSS: Really Simple

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Friday, October 01, 2004

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How RSS scores over mailing lists, bookmarks and news tickers

Mailing lists
Using mailing lists as a medium of distributing content requires websites to maintain long e-mail lists and sending thousands of mail everyday, generating a lot of traffic. RSS, which is a pull mechanism, doesn't require websites to maintain mailing lists and users to fill annoying forms. Also, as users have the freedom of fetching content at their wish, traffic generated by mass mailing also gets reduced.

Bookmarks
Using RSS readers is a better way than book marking websites and checking them for content. With an RSS reader, a user can get content from several websites in a single interface, which would otherwise require him to visit different websites and pages.

News tickers
RSS also uses a better mechanism for getting news than news tickers. The tickers do not follow any standard protocol for information sharing, so a single application will not work with all content providers. Instead, a ticker is generally connected to a few content providers only, and you require different tickers for different websites. News tickers also are limited in the way they can present information to the user.

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