Feeds as content May18 '07

I've been thinking a lot about how many RSS feeds I contribute to and/or publish - either directly, such as my blog posts, or indirectly, such as comments on my blog posts.

Direct feeds

A direct feed is a feed that I manually contribute to. Examples are:

Blog posts.
Flickr photos.
Twitter status.

Direct feeds are easy to understand, because it's a one-way road. The formula could look like:

1 Author = 1 Feed item

Indirect feeds

An indirect feed is a feed that obtains items through my actions elsewhere. Examples are:

Comments on my blog posts.
Shared items from Google Reader.
My web site stats.

Indirect feeds are a bit more complicated, because they are coming from external sources, possibly from other feeds. Yes - feeds can feed feeds. (That has to be the geekiest sentence I've ever written ;)

Indirect feeds are not content that I have manually pushed, but rather content as a result of content I've pushed.

The circle of feeds

Feeds can work in a circle. Applications such as Tumblr and Jaiku allow users to use any external RSS feed as a source of new posts. In other words, each time the external RSS feed is updated, that creates a new post on said sites.

In turn, that new post naturally adds an item to the local RSS feed.

This diagram helps visualize this concept:

Feed -> Post -> Feed

Essentially, you could create an "endless loop," in which posts and feeds keep bouncing off one another. This is not an ideal thing to do.

Feeds as content

In fact, things can get very confusing when you start using feeds as content.

Feeds should not be used to create content. Authors create content, not machines.

If you need to mash together several blogs or social networks that you are involved with - mash the feed, not the blogs. This is very easy to do with services such as Yahoo! Pipes.

Categories: Content , RSS

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matthom is published and produced by Matt Thommes - an independent publishing enthusiast, mobile blogger, content creator, informative writer, web developer from a suburb of Chicago. Never one to conform, Matt intends to promote the effect the web has on our lives, in an effort to intensify, instruct, and clarify all that is happening around us.