WTF Is RSS, Social Bookmarking And Social Networking?
What On Earth Is RSS?
Wikipedia says:
RSS (an abbreviation for Really Simple Syndication) is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.[2] An RSS document (which is called a “feed”, “web feed”,[3] or “channel”) includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. RSS feeds can be read using software called an “RSS reader”, “feed reader”, or “aggregator”, which can be web-based, desktop-based, or mobile-device-based. A standardized XML file format allows the information to be published once and viewed by many different programs. The user subscribes to a feed by entering the feed’s URI, often referred to informally as a “URL” (uniform resource locator), although technically the two terms are not exactly synonymous, into the reader, or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The RSS reader checks the user’s subscribed feeds regularly for new work, downloads any updates that it finds, and provides a user interface to monitor and read the feeds.
Did you really understand that? Here is what RSS is in plain English courtesy of the folks at Common Craft.
Now What’s Social Bookmarking?
Turning to the definition at Wikipedia
Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata, typically in the form of tags that collectively and/or collaboratively become a folksonomy. Folksonomy is also called social tagging, “the process by which many users add metadata in the form of keywords to shared content”.
Here’s the plain English definition of Social Bookmarking.
What On Earth Is Social Networking?
Just being a little dramatic as most people are familiar with the concept of Social Networking. If you are really dying to read the Wikipedia definition then head here or you could just watch the video for a plain English definition of Social Networking.
Questions/comments? Use the form below!
