The unified feed theory
Late 2005 brought us the unified feed icon. As we see this distributed, used and updated through applications and Web sites that use “feeds” to syndicate “content”, hopefully we’ll see something else - namely; The unified feed spec and description.
“Feeds” come in several flavors. RSS and ATOM being on the top of the list. I believe that choice is important in life, and competition is good for “business” (or making the quality and value of the two competing things increase). So, I don’t actually mind that there are several types of feeds because all types are vying for my usage, inherently making them better. However, as a developer I’d like to see a unified feed spec so that creating services that distribute and services that parse this content will become easier. I realize that this is no small task, and I look forward to the years ahead as the pioneers in these areas strive to do exactly that.
A unified description is also going to be needed. It’s really hard to describe what feeds are in short and simple terms, and so far we only have bad examples to go by.
“A web feed is a document (often XML-based) which contains content items, often summaries of stories or weblog posts with web links to longer versions. Weblogs and news websites 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. While RSS feed is by far the most common term, the generic “web feed” terminology is sometimes used by writers hoping to make the concept clear to novice users, and by advocates of other feed formats.” — Wikipedia.org
Wikipedia’s description of a “Web feed” is appalling. “…which contains content items, often summaries of stories or weblog posts with web links to longer versions.”? This is exactly what they shouldn’t be. Syndication of content isn’t exactly syndication if you’re only giving away a small piece of the content! But I’ll leave this argument for a completely different day, what I’m really concerned about is this horrible description of what a Web feed is to novices.
Would it be impossible to describe what a “feed” is, without actually describing the technologies and languages used? What I mean to say is, can we possibly avoid mentioning that a feed is generally an XML document? I have it on good authority to say that my Mother will never know what XML is, and never should need to know in order to use feeds. Reading that definition, as someone that does not know what XML is, could be very confusing.
So, starting with the unified feed icon, I believe we need to stop calling feeds RSS, or ATOM, but simply “feed”. We also need to come up with the terminology to describe what a feed actually is, without saying XML, RSS, or ATOM at all - but rather describing the ideas behind a feed and its intent.
What is a feed?
A “feed” is a way of syndicating almost any type of content (be it articles, essays, plain or rich text, images, audio, or video) in a simple and portable way. Feeds are generally used to distribute frequently updated content, such as news and notifications. An example of this would be CNNs feeds, which provide headline feeds on various topics to keep their readers up-to-date with news.
To take advantage of any feed on the Internet, you will need a “Feed reader” or a Web site service that is capable of reading these feeds. These feed readers appear very much like an email application, in essence you’re being ‘emailed’ every time one of your “subscriptions” update their content.
Many people who have many Web sites they visit regularly, use feeds to be notified of these updates rather than visiting hundreds of Web sites each day.
— end feed description —
I do not believe that I am the person to tell the non-feed-savvy World what a feed actually is, but whoever that person is could have a good start with what I wrote above. I think for feeds to become truly usable, they don’t just need a standardized visual representation, but an understandable description.
I look forward to seeing anyone improve on the above, and perhaps add it to their own sites, to help those that do not enjoy feeds as we all do.
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If you don’t like the definition of a web feed in wikipedia go update it. That’s the beauty of a wiki. Go make it better. Your definition of a web feed is good and would benefit others.
Wade on December 30th, 2005 1:33 pm
Wade: Valid point. However, I was hoping to gather the thoughts of others to formulate the proper definition prior to editing the Wikipedia 100 times.
Colin D. Devroe on December 30th, 2005 1:59 pm
You might consider defining “syndicate,” as for many people, that’s not in their vocabulary. Also, you might want to address the differing opinions on what RSS actually stands for - “Rich Site Summary” vs. “Really Simple Syndication.”
Nathan Smith on December 30th, 2005 3:33 pm
Nathan: Although I agree with you, I do not want to prejudge someone’s intelligence level, and neither does the dictionaries or encyclopedias of the world. If someone does not know what syndicate means, perhaps its time to look it up.
Also, RSS is not within the definition. What developers end up settling on what RSS actually stands for is beyond the scope of this effort.
Colin D. Devroe on December 30th, 2005 3:46 pm
RSS Made Easy
I’ve tried explaining what RSS (feeds) is and I can tell you it’s no easy task. So thanks to Paul Stamatiou for pointing us to The unified feed theory which explains RSS in a way that’s simple and easy to understand, even if you are …
Cameron Olthuis on December 30th, 2005 10:09 pm
Why Are RSS Feed Buttons Orange?
It’s easy to scan a page and find an RSS feed nowadays - we’ve been trained to look for the little orange buttons. But how did they become orange in the first place?…
James Bowskill on December 30th, 2005 10:58 pm
Maybe orange makes it stand out in all kinds of places? Against dark or white backgrounds? And few people use orange backgrounds… too “bright”.
Ming Han on December 31st, 2005 8:53 am
You know according to me what could be describes as ‘feed’, ‘RSS’ or ‘Atom’ to newbies is something like this :
Unlike conventional sites which have their contents rarely modified, today’s we came up with blog where actually their content gets updated every time and so as to keep up with what’s actually on our favorite blog we have the technology of ‘feed’ which actually takes the content of our favorite blogs and put it in a compact form which is easy for the surfer to scan and select his required material having the most updated one at the top of the list. So this leaves him from the tiring task of checking his favorite blog stuff every time to know the new juice : just subscribing to his favorite blogs’ feed would allow the content to be delivered to him right at his desk
Hans on January 1st, 2006 2:28 pm
For you consideration Six Apart’s “About Feeds”…
Jay Allen on January 1st, 2006 8:44 pm
Watch out, you’re going to be on Dave Winer’s shit list for daring to call them anything but RSS.
I wholeheartedly agree with you on calling them feeds. I don’t call them ‘http pages’ or even ‘html pages’. They’re web pages because I could care less about the protocols/formats. I call them feeds because I could care less about the protocols/formats. Some people just don’t get it however.
Matt Grommes on January 2nd, 2006 4:24 pm
Orange? It doesn’t have to be orange, that’s just the common color:
“Not a fan of orange? Download the package and customize the icon to your liking. We believe that as a symbol, the feed icon is recognizable enough that it doesn’t need to be restricted to one colour.” (http://feedicons.com/)
heliker on January 9th, 2006 7:36 pm
No one looked like they were going to edit the RSS or web feed entries at Wikipedia, so I did.
I found this article really useful, so thank you. I’ve credited Colin & Hans (8th comment here) - alongside others - in the References section, as some of the resulting entry alludes to stuff you mentioned here.
Kx
Kathleen on August 29th, 2006 6:06 pm
Kathleen: thanks!
Colin D. Devroe on August 29th, 2006 7:02 pm
[…] The blue RSS button at the top of the browser is fairly misleading. Apple is attempting to “brand” a doc-spec. In other words, they are saying that all “feeds” are RSS. Obviously this is not true. I do not want that icon to change from RSS to ATOM to “WHATEVER” when it applies, I’d much rather see Apple use the unified feed icons to go along with the unified feed theory (another post I have to bring over to my local site soon). […]
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[…] still having trouble understanding the concept of RSS, Colin at Uber Geeks has posted a good entry-level description of RSS or, Web Feeds as they’re likely to become […]
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