Glossary Series Day 12: Feed

This post is part of the Glossary Series, a 100-day conversation designed to develop and clarify the language we use to describe online communication. As Year 2008 comes to a close, the emerging Glossary of Online Communication will be published along with a selection of the comments from my readership. I hope to see your comments among them.

Day 12: Feed

Wikipedia states that a feed is a “data format used for providing users with frequently updated content.”

Other definitions I’ve come across seem to veer over to talk about “RSS,” which is the acronym for “Really Simple Syndication.” Really. I’m beginning to see the confusion here.

An RSS feed, as seen by the public when reading a blog, usually shows up as an orange square which you can click, and which then takes you to a page where you decide where you would like the blog posts to be delivered. The posts are “fed” to you using this simple form of syndication.

So it’s hard to talk about a feed without talking about RSS.

On her excellent website, Conversation Agent, Valeria Maltoni has made some insightful comments about feeds relating to collaboration. She also says, “A feed is a collection of information that comes at you. It's the 24/7 hour concept of what we want in our lives. It's the opposite of broadcasting…”

I believe she means that a broadcast sends information out through channels, and a feed receives things through channels. I love that she calls it a concept of what we want in our lives. We decide which feeds we will sign up for. I’m very picky about my feeds, because I want to feed myself the most informative and most directed  information possible on a daily basis.

I signed up for Valeria’s feed from Conversation Agent and it shows up on my Google home page. I also have feeds from Brian Clark of Copyblogger, Darren Rowse of Problogger, Laughing Squid, a Frenchpod class, and the live cam of the Eiffel Tower. Among other things. It’s interesting to carry my own feed from my website, Great Adaptations, and see how my blog titles look next to those from some blogs with huge audiences. Educational. A common format for feeds is to show the three most recent post titles.

I’m leaving the formal definition of “feed” until later, when I’ve gotten some, um, feedback from everyone.

Question. What feeds you?

Suzanna