The Big Picture

RSS+SMS. For free.

Yahoo! Feed Alerts is now available, according to RusellBeattie.com. The service alerts you when a new post is added to a feed. I would have been more excited about this about six months ago. But it's still cool.

From an association standpoint, we are all battling with the Blackberry crowd. ("Who cares if it's on the Web site...I'm not at my desk.") I do see some applications. You could have a Breaking News or Very Important News section or something - saving alerts in this section for only when immediate responses are needed. (Advocacy initiatives and crucial votes come to mind.)

I was actually more excited by a nugget he threw in at the end of the post. Phonifier.com has a basic transcoding service you can use and code you can download to make your Web site into a mobile-friendlier site. Something we all probably need to be looking into quickly, with more phones having Web capabilities and members slowly starting to play with the features.

More Use RSS Than Have Heard Of It

I'm working on a presentation I have to give to hospital association CEOs on Monday about blogging. In doing some research, I found this interesting white paper about RSS feeds. It seems that only four percent of the population know they are accessing RSS feeds, but about 27 percent of the population actually use the feeds (but just don't know it.)

In that number, the report is including start pages like MyYahoo and MyMSN that allow readers to customize pages. Interestingly, of the four percent that signed up for feeds and knew it, most are accessing news feeds for national and world news. Only 23 percent of that four percent are using RSS feeds to stay up to date with blogs.

Quite humbling, if you think about it.

So, anyways, if anyone is reading this and has some suggestions on what you think I should tell hospital association CEOs about blogging, please comment here or e-mail suggestions to slea@mhanet.org. (And thanks to Paul Chaney at Radiant Marketing for already helping me out too. It's much appreciated.)

RSS Usage Revealed

Pheedo decided to take a peek under the hood at some of the RSS advertiser and publisher data that they have been collecting. A few insights:

• Tuesday is the most active day of the week for RSS, Saturday the least active. Second best day is Wednesday.
• Morning scanners view more content but late-night scanners click through more. (I'm both, though. How do they know it's not the same group, with just more free time to actually digest information late at night?)
• Data illustrate shift from RSS early adopters to mainstream.

For the full story, click here. (Thanks to What's Next Blog for the link)

Brain Feed(s)

Need more ideas and insights for your work? The University of Saskatchewan Library offers an online directory of academic journals that offer RSS feeds. (via Fast Company Now)

Through The Side Window With RSS

A story from the Associated Press has some great sound bites from mainstream media and others about RSS.