Julio Garcia

On Web Feeds

As a web developer and avid web surfer, I find it annoying when I come across a web site that does not provide a web feed.

For those that don’t know;

A web feed is a document (often XML-based) which contains content items, often summaries of stories or blog posts with web links to longer versions. News websites and blogs are common sources for web feeds, but feeds are also used to deliver structured information ranging from weather data to “top ten” lists of hit tunes. The two main web feed formats are RSS and Atom.

The terms “publishing a feed” and syndication are used to describe making available a feed for an information source, such as a blog. Like syndicated print newspaper features or broadcast programs, web feed contents may be shared and republished by other web sites. (For that reason, one popular definition of RSS is Really Simple Syndication.)

More often, feeds are subscribed to directly by users with aggregators or feed readers, which combine the contents of multiple web feeds for display on a single screen or series of screens. Some modern web browsers incorporate aggregator features. Depending on the aggregator, users typically subscribe to a feed by manually entering the URL of a feed or clicking a link in a web browser.

[Wikipedia]

One site that doesn’t provide a web feed is the news page for an unofficial Tool fan web site, The Tool Page. Now this site has been around and provided quality news and information about the band Tool for 11 years. In a majority of that time, I would check the site every day, sometimes multiple times a day looking for the latest news or info on one of my favorite bands. Even those days are gone and my interest in the band wanes, it would still be nice to get the updates in my feed reader but I can’t, but more importantly I don’t want to bother with reminding myself to checking for updates daily — another reason I am losing interest in the band.

Another site that should provide web feeds, but doesn’t is Yahoo! While they provide RSS feeds for their AP, Reuters, and entertainment news feeds, they don’t for other items such as fantasy sports. I often play some sort of fantasy sport; baseball, hockey, or football each year on Yahoo because they provide the most reliable and user friendly environment. However, it has been frustrating to stay on top of things in my league as I am too busy, tired, or uninterested in keeping up with the day-to-day happenings. A web feed of the necessary information would alleviate this issue because I would find out about the latest transactions, scoring, and discussions in one place, on my schedule allowing me to keep track. Instead I check at random times during the day, maybe missing a relevant trade, or important or funny message board thread. It would be great for all users if Yahoo were to provide a web feed of all transactions and discussions occurring in the various leagues. But, as of now, Yahoo does not, presumably because they would rather have users’ “eye-balls” on their site viewing advertisements. Shame.

The last site I want to mention is Equibase.com the web site for the Equibase Company which is a “general partnership between the Thoroughbred Racing Associations of North America (TRA) and The Jockey Club to provide the Thoroughbred racetracks of North America with racing information and statistics”.

For a long time I have casually watched the triple-crown horse races but only up until a few months ago did I try to learn more about the sport. Now instead of being able to track horse and jockey performances, race results, and various industry news via web feeds, I have to go their site ( hopefully after all the data has been updated), and then either find the wanted result on their result page, watch a scroller with the simple results go by or load a PDF file with detail results of each race that occurred at each track. Needless to say that is a hassle, why would one put themselves through the ordeal? If I can’t learn more about the sport or access the information I need or want or should have, how am I going to be more involved and help make it grow? Simple, I can’t and it has been over a month since I watched a race.

Now compare these three with the Amazon Web Services blog. It is maintained by the Amazon Web Services Developer Relations Team and they recently linked to my ‘I hate hard drives post‘. It was through their incoming link I discovered their blog and honestly, at first I wasn’t terribly interested in the Amazon services beyond S3. Even so, I subscribed to their feed to follow along with their various discussions, and guess what? I’ve become considerably more interested in all of their services. Why? Because I was able to read along at my pace, at my set time, when I choose. And when I can choose the time and place, the topic has all of my attention.

Bottom line, a content-owner-to-visitor relationship is just like any other, a two-way street. If a content owner wants people to come to their site, they better make it usable, beyond interface design, and useful for the visitor to return and in turn users will help them grow. Web feeds are just one way to do this. I say a good rule of thumb for providing RSS feeds should be that if your site has any relevant content that is updated on a regular basis, it should have a companion RSS feed.

Allow your user base to grow by making it easy for them to access information with no hassle and they’ll come to trust you. Worry about making money later rather than trying to force users to do what they don’t want just because you want them too (a violation of the 2-way relationship rule). It is better to prune a overgrowth rather than try to force something to grow from nothing - I don’t know, that makes sense in my head.