Do You Deliver? Part One

I’ve been doing web design and development for nearly 14 years. It goes without saying that a lot has changed in that time. One of my favorite Internet innovations is one that isn’t necessarily visible or thought about, let alone utilized by everyone.

“Back in the day” (which, in Internet ‘age’ really isn’t that long ago) you’d have to exert quite a bit of energy to consistently follow your favorite websites/blogs. It usually entailed keeping a long list of bookmarks/favorites in your browser that you tried to find time to click through to keep up with new articles/news/posts that these sites were updating. The result was usually succumbing to only really following a handful of sites, which you could keep a handle on, and a bloated bookmarks listed of sites you hardly ever visited, if at all.

Then came the era of ‘push’ technology and syndication. These two innovations took the Internet, I believe, farther than most other innovations that have happened in the last decade.

You may not recognize them at first, but chances are you are already familiar with both concepts and use them on a daily basis.

‘Push’ technology relates to the idea that some content can be ‘pushed’ to you, rather than you having to go and ‘pull’ it all for yourself. Think text messaging and you’ll get the concept. When someone texts you, it is an almost-immediate relay to your phone. You didn’t have to request the message from someone you, hopefully, care about and are interested in. There was a connection between you because of your relationship with one another that allowed them to deliver content to you instead of you having to constantly ask/request it from them.

Syndication (or more commonly known as RSS) is another mechanism along these lines. It’s almost the idea of push technology with a pattern attached. Think newspaper delivery and you’ll get the concept. If you have a newspaper subscription, seeing a newspaper on your driveway isn’t a one-time occurrence - it’s something that happens daily. There is a pattern of delivery. You make the request/subscribe once and the delivery happens until you turn it off/unsubscribe.

Tomorrow I’ll talk about how you can do a “Delivery Check” to see how well you are using these two technologies to get your message out. Until then, check out this short video from the folks at Common Craft called “RSS in Plain English”:

Posted 05.23.2009

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