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great set of rss tools below!

RSS has been around since the late 90's. RSS incorporation into the media and e commerce is accelerating at a very rapid pace! Surprisingly with all the information about RSS available, it would appear that the general public still hasn't full embraced the technology or the enormous potential from a marketing standpoint.

So what exactly is RSS anyway? RSS stands for "really simple syndication" or "rich site summary." This simple technology allows a publisher to publish contents or information on their websites in an easy fashion. Readers and subscribers receive the latest rss news and articles when they become available. RSS also allows the publisher to syndicate his/her own content to other webmasters' websites via a blog or rss, thereby increasing the publisher's own exposure and audience.

As implied earlier, rss specification has a sole purpose to deliver updates to web-based content. Using tools such as this one allows webmasters to provide headlines and fresh content in a quick and easy manner. Meanwhile from the other end of the spectrum, consumers use a rss reader and rss aggregators to collect and monitor their favorite rss news feed or other web-based content in one central program or location. The content viewed in the rss reader or rss aggregator comes from what is called a rss feed, basically a program that can check rss enabled web pages on behalf of the user and display any updated news or articles that it finds.

For quite some time now the main vehicle for reaching content has depended solely on the use of the major search engines and directories. Now a rapidly increasing number of content sources both old and new, are migrating to or adding rss and/or blogs as a key distribution center, as more people utilize rss readers and rss aggregators to keep themselves informed. The ability to maintain high exposure and visibility is rapidly shifting from the search engine and content optimization to the rss directory and search tools, thus providing maybe another complimentary field in the world of content optimization that might be called "rss search engine marketing." Venues such as the yahoo rss feed can certainly provide heavy artillery in rss search engine marketing as it gathers and distributes content from across the internet that includes newspapers, magazines, and blogs.

Consider what some of these "giants" in the industry had to say about RSS: eBay - ...feeds would be used to push special offers, promotions and system status messages via rss. Microsoft, IBM - ... you should familiarize yourself with the format & investigate how you could use it in your company... companies that don't have a RSS strategy in place by the end of 2004 might be behind the curve; their competitors will probably have already implemented some level of RSS support in their web sites. You cannot afford to ignore the RSS phenomenon if you want to remain in business on the internet. Remember email? Hundreds of email based applications were developed along with email marketing strategies which literally brought millions to the "early" adopters of the application. RSS is today what email was "back in the day." Though much has been written about it, believe it or not, it's still not been made popular yet, but those that adopt this proven technology early on, can cash in on a great opportunity!

RSS tools that will get you started, click the pictures for more information: