lesson 1: introduction to rss

Introduction

“We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results.”

                                                                                                   - Herman Melville

Herman Melville lived in 19^th century and the word internet, and RSS would not have come into his mind even in his wildest dreams. Still, a lot of writers have come and gone after him – I haven’t found a better statement to present our context before you.  Money has stirred an honest nest around us and although money can’t be said to be everything in our life, it’s a fact that none of us can’t live without dollars. We all crave for dollars and run after that using different means. It’s these “means” that we select to run our business that matters. Putting it in simple words, modern day business is all about connecting people. Needless to say, those who connect to people in a better way, often succeeds.  Paradoxically, those who are armed with the latest technologies are capable of connecting to people more successfully. Before the advent of RSS and blogs, these technologies used to burn out a hole in your pocket. All those days are gone. Now, if you have a website you only need some knowledge to make things happen for you.  It’s this vital knowledge that I am going to pass on you through this book.

 Again playing with Herman’s words, our lives are now indeed connected by a thousand invisible threads. The only difference is that, unlike the times of Herman, we connect these threads by the medium of internet. And as you know, internet has become too crowded a place that reaching people through the net has become a tough task. To make things further complicated, gone are the days when your customers would have fallen to your marketing ad-words and click your “buy now” button without any hesitation. This is where RSS and blogs come to picture.