Using RSS with StumbleUpon

I’m thinking about RSS today.

As you may know, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. A name which didn’t help explain things at all, when I first heard about it a couple years ago.

What it means is that sites that frequently have new information or feeds added can send some or all of that information to another place. A simple way to picture it is to imagine that you’re sitting at your kitchen table, reading the morning paper. The special thing about this paper is that you’ve chosen the author of every section, so that the paper is chock full of information that’s of interest to you.

Now, if you already know how to use RSS, skip this part and go down to the bold text. If you’ve never used RSS or really don’t understand how it works, keep reading.

If you click on the orange button you see above, it will add this blog to your RSS reader. Don’t think you have an RSS reader? Well, if you have the newer version of Internet Explorer or Firefox (I thoroughly recommend Firefox), then you have one built in. But if you don’t mind, i can recommend a better one. Bloglines is an absolutely terrific feed reader, not to mention it’s free. There are a couple reasons I love bloglines. One is that I can share my feeds with anyone who wants to see them, simply by adding a link. Another reason is that because Bloglines resides online instead of on my computer, I can see my feeds from anywhere. And, to make it really easy to use, Bloglines provides a Bookmark (or Favorites) link that you just drag up to your toolbar. Then, the next time you find a blog you want to add to your “newspaper,” just click the link when you’re looking at the blog. Choose which feed you want if there are more than one to choose from (if I’m feeling lazy, I just look for the feed that has the most people subscribing to it) and click on Subscribe and viola! You’re done!

Okay, explanation over.

So how can RSS help your SU experience?

If you scroll down your SU page and look at the right sidebar, you’ll see two RSS buttons:

Favorites shows all the pages that someone thumbs up, regardless of what they post on their blog. If they make a post that’s not connected to a webpage then you won’t see it using this choice.

If you want to keep up with your friends pages though, use “reviews and blog” instead. That gives you everything that your friends post, regardless of whether it’s actually connected to a webpage (if they use the “Post new blog” button instead). Using this, you can read through your friends SU posts in a matter of minutes!