Why you (yes, you) should use RSS feeds
If you read things on the internet, you should be using RSS feeds. Given that you're currently reading my livejournal, I think it's safe to say that you read things on the internet. Therefore you (yes, you) should be using RSS feeds.
Let be elaborate:
1. What's my motivation?
So here's the issue: I have a lot of friends on livejournal. The majority post an entry once a week, at most. For many it's more like once a month, or even once a year. So first off, I have a huge number of people to keep track of, and second, it's really hard to keep track of those people who don't post very often. (If they only post once a month, it's clearly not worth my checking their journal every day. But if I only check once a month, I risk only seeing their posts weeks too late. More realistically, if I only intend to check on something once a month, I'll probably just forget about it and never check it at all.)
"But Emily!" you are undoubtedly screaming by now, "That's what your friends page is for!" And indeed, by reading all my friends' journals together on one page, I avoid both of the above issues. I only have one page to keep track of, not one hundred. And although any individual friend may only post sporadically, they average out to guarantee me multiple posts a day.
2. The world outside livejournal
Okay, so I've solved the livejournal problem. But I encounter more or less the same situation all over the web, with non-livejournal blogs, webcomics, social bookmarking, newspapers, and any other website whose updates I want to keep track of. What I need is something like a friends page to collect all of these updates, not just the ones from livejournal. Hello, RSS feeds.
3. What are RSS feeds anyway?
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. "Syndication", as in, that stuff that you want to read. "Really Simple", as in, if you're computer literate enough to have a livejournal account, you can definitely handle RSS.
An RSS feed is basically a list that a website publishes of its recent updates. Most of the websites that you might want to keep up with (like all those types of sites that I listed above) will have an RSS feed that you can follow. The handy thing about RSS feeds is that they all work the same way, no matter what website they're from. That means that you can keep track of not just all your livejournal friends but all your websites together in one place.
4. The WH-word that doesn't begin with "wh" (ie. How)
To read RSS feeds, you need a feed reader. There are lots of these in existence. Personally, I use Sage, which is a Firefox add-on. It describes itself as providing "a lot of what you need and not much of what you don't", which I find accurate. It's very easy to install and use, and it doesn't do anything unexpected or annoying. One of the things I most like about it is that rather than collecting everything onto one website, it links to each post/article/thing individually, so that things retain their home websites' appearances (unlike your livejournal friends page, which gives all your friends' entries your own journal's appearance).
If you don't want to install anything new or don't use Firefox, another option is Google Reader. I don't use Google Reader, so I can't tell you much about it, but I hear good things. (And come on, it's Google. Of course it's good.) If you like having everything actually collected onto one page with the same formatting (as I don't), Google Reader does that. It also has social bookmarking built-in, so if you use gmail, for example, it will automatically collect recommendations from your gmail contacts who are also using it.
In fact, you may be following an RSS feed or two already without knowing it. Livejournal's syndicated feeds are using RSS or something similar. You could just continue to read all your RSS feeds through livejournal, but it has the major disadvantage that only paid members can create new feeds, which means that if you as a non-paid member want to follow a less popular blog, you may not be able to. Plus, following feeds just isn't what livejournal was really designed for. So while it works, there are much better interfaces available.
5. Random Fine Print (If you don't care, skip to Section 6.)
RSS is actually only one example of the more general phenomenon of syndicated feeds. Atom feeds are another popular one. They work exactly the same way, and most feed readers will treat them exactly the same, so you'll never actually need to know which your dealing with. Isn't technology nice sometimes?
6. Conclusion
Try it. Please. If you don't like it, you can stop, and I won't be mad. But for me, having a feed reader set up has totally changed the way I look at the internet. It's very liberating to know that even if something isn't updating consistently enough for you to check it on a regular basis, you can still be informed as soon as something does happen. It allows you to take advantage of new content on a lot of great websites that you'd probably be missing otherwise (because, let's face it, you can't count on great things happening on schedule). It may not sound earth-shattering right now, but give it a couple months and I bet you'll be shocked by how much better it allows you to keep up with things online.
7. An Exercise for the Reader
Go forth and read! And come back in a couple months and tell me how it's going.
Let be elaborate:
1. What's my motivation?
So here's the issue: I have a lot of friends on livejournal. The majority post an entry once a week, at most. For many it's more like once a month, or even once a year. So first off, I have a huge number of people to keep track of, and second, it's really hard to keep track of those people who don't post very often. (If they only post once a month, it's clearly not worth my checking their journal every day. But if I only check once a month, I risk only seeing their posts weeks too late. More realistically, if I only intend to check on something once a month, I'll probably just forget about it and never check it at all.)
"But Emily!" you are undoubtedly screaming by now, "That's what your friends page is for!" And indeed, by reading all my friends' journals together on one page, I avoid both of the above issues. I only have one page to keep track of, not one hundred. And although any individual friend may only post sporadically, they average out to guarantee me multiple posts a day.
2. The world outside livejournal
Okay, so I've solved the livejournal problem. But I encounter more or less the same situation all over the web, with non-livejournal blogs, webcomics, social bookmarking, newspapers, and any other website whose updates I want to keep track of. What I need is something like a friends page to collect all of these updates, not just the ones from livejournal. Hello, RSS feeds.
3. What are RSS feeds anyway?
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. "Syndication", as in, that stuff that you want to read. "Really Simple", as in, if you're computer literate enough to have a livejournal account, you can definitely handle RSS.
An RSS feed is basically a list that a website publishes of its recent updates. Most of the websites that you might want to keep up with (like all those types of sites that I listed above) will have an RSS feed that you can follow. The handy thing about RSS feeds is that they all work the same way, no matter what website they're from. That means that you can keep track of not just all your livejournal friends but all your websites together in one place.
4. The WH-word that doesn't begin with "wh" (ie. How)
To read RSS feeds, you need a feed reader. There are lots of these in existence. Personally, I use Sage, which is a Firefox add-on. It describes itself as providing "a lot of what you need and not much of what you don't", which I find accurate. It's very easy to install and use, and it doesn't do anything unexpected or annoying. One of the things I most like about it is that rather than collecting everything onto one website, it links to each post/article/thing individually, so that things retain their home websites' appearances (unlike your livejournal friends page, which gives all your friends' entries your own journal's appearance).
If you don't want to install anything new or don't use Firefox, another option is Google Reader. I don't use Google Reader, so I can't tell you much about it, but I hear good things. (And come on, it's Google. Of course it's good.) If you like having everything actually collected onto one page with the same formatting (as I don't), Google Reader does that. It also has social bookmarking built-in, so if you use gmail, for example, it will automatically collect recommendations from your gmail contacts who are also using it.
In fact, you may be following an RSS feed or two already without knowing it. Livejournal's syndicated feeds are using RSS or something similar. You could just continue to read all your RSS feeds through livejournal, but it has the major disadvantage that only paid members can create new feeds, which means that if you as a non-paid member want to follow a less popular blog, you may not be able to. Plus, following feeds just isn't what livejournal was really designed for. So while it works, there are much better interfaces available.
5. Random Fine Print (If you don't care, skip to Section 6.)
RSS is actually only one example of the more general phenomenon of syndicated feeds. Atom feeds are another popular one. They work exactly the same way, and most feed readers will treat them exactly the same, so you'll never actually need to know which your dealing with. Isn't technology nice sometimes?
6. Conclusion
Try it. Please. If you don't like it, you can stop, and I won't be mad. But for me, having a feed reader set up has totally changed the way I look at the internet. It's very liberating to know that even if something isn't updating consistently enough for you to check it on a regular basis, you can still be informed as soon as something does happen. It allows you to take advantage of new content on a lot of great websites that you'd probably be missing otherwise (because, let's face it, you can't count on great things happening on schedule). It may not sound earth-shattering right now, but give it a couple months and I bet you'll be shocked by how much better it allows you to keep up with things online.
7. An Exercise for the Reader
Go forth and read! And come back in a couple months and tell me how it's going.