In the good old days of Web 1.0, we used to worry about how a site looked. We worried a lot about pixels, placement and size. We made sure that the site looked perfect. We had full control over its content, but ironically many of the sites felt impersonal. Now, during these Web 2.0 times, the presence of users on websites (as discussed in our previous article) can be felt in different ways through ratings and reviews, tagging, editorial control, et cetera.
In this second part of our 3-part series on Web 2.0, we focus on openness and how to make site content sharable and reusable among different applications and devices.
Syndication
With the overload of information that we have every day, a lot of us have started to organize the information that we want to have delivered to our computers, cell phones and other devices using Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. RSS is a new way to reach customers, providing a simple way for marketers to share content on their websites and make it available to users without asking them to visit the site every time new content is added.
In order to entice customers to come back to their websites, some companies only publish some of their content on the RSS feed, requiring users to click on a link to read more (e.g., The New York Times). Other companies, particularly in the retail industry, are allowing customers to create an RSS feed for a specific search. Craigslist.org has been providing this functionality for a while now, and companies like newegg.com have added this functionality on their sites so that customers can keep an eye on their products directly from the portal page.
What types of content can you syndicate for your users? Good examples are product information or updates, new product releases, news and articles. It's important to look at your content and determine which type of content is worth linking back to your site.
Author notes:Riccardo La Rosa is director of emerging interactions at Molecular. Read full bio.