What is RSS and Twitter?
RSS stands for both Rich Site Summary and Really Simple Syndication but it always refers to the same technology.
It is a mean of transmitting and updating news in an automated way.
Most news sites (including virtually all blogs) will publish what is called an RSS feed which is regularly updated with the latest available headlines and/or articles.
The RSS feed is not human readable. It is an XML format which is designed to be read by machines rather than humans.
To take advantage of an RSS feed you would use a piece of software called an RSS aggregator. Most of them are very similar to email client programs, but instead of incoming emails, they display news from various sources (from all the feeds you have registered with, or “subscribed to” as is commonly said but it has nothing to do with money). Unread news typically appear in bold, just as unread emails do.
An RSS aggregator makes it very convenient to follow up on news from a large number of sources in a single place. SharpReader is an example of an RSS Reader.
Just like there is webmail, there are also are web-RSS-aggregators. Bloglines is such an online aggregator. Il allows you to track all your news from a single place you can access with a regular web browser.
Also, most modern web browsers will also handle RSS feeds, but in a limited manner. They will use an RSS feed as a dynamic bookmark folder with automatic bookmarks to all the news in the feed. Unlike aggregators, browsers will not save the news if you don’t check on them every day.
Finally, on a more professional level, some websites will aggregate news from different sources onto a single site. Hence the “syndication” in the name.
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (or “tweets”; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service, instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific.
Updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone is the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, email or through an application. For SMS, four gateway numbers are currently available: short codes for the USA, Canada, and India, as well as a UK number for international use. Several third parties offer posting and receiving updates via email.
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