Practical Uses for RSS

Have I ever mentioned that I love RSS feeds? I’ve been experimenting more and more with them, and I’m finding them incredibly convenient for both producing and consuming information. And I’m not talking about blog RSS feeds, although they are of course the most popular use; I’m talking about other ways you can use RSS in personal life and in business.

How do you use RSS? That’s not rhetorical. Really, I’d like to know how you use RSS. What tools are you using, especially script-based tools used for publishing, consuming, or mashing up feeds (not readers or aggregators)?

Here are some practical examples of RSS at work:

Lifestream: we’ve all heard of FriendFeed and Twitter — I’ve been experimenting with a similar lifestream service just for friends and family. I can’t tell you how much more I know about people by getting these RSS alerts about what they’re doing. And because it’s a personal service, I’m getting more real-life entries, and not the polish or image conscious alerts that I get on Twitter.

Web site content: almost any web-based content can be transformed into an RSS feed. The only real requirement is that the information changes regularly.

Upcoming events: RSS is a great way to let people know of events and activities that may be happening soon. It’s easy to turn an “events” page into an RSS feed.

New Products: Got an online store with new inventory added regularly? Add details about your newly added items to an RSS feed to let people know what’s just come in.

Weekly/Monthly Specials: Do you regularly make special offers on different products in your inventory? Again, RSS is a great way to tell people what’s on special this week or this month.

Newsletters: If you regularly produce an email newsletter, then consider converting it to RSS format as well as continuing to email it.

New Links: If you have a links directory, considering creating an RSS feed of the new links added to your directory in the last week or so. If you have a category structure within that directory, with links added often, you can create a feed for each category.

New Members: Do you run a public membership site? Recently joined members could be listed in an RSS feed with links direct to their profiles.

Ticker RSS Feeds: Do you have timely information to communicate to your customers? Automate the process with software and RSS can feed new critical information on an hourly basis (or more frequently if needed).

Vacation feed: I wrote a WordPress plug-in that allows you to import friends’ RSS feeds into your blog. Set a start and end date and time, a post frequency, and a minimum post length, then head out of town for your holiday!

Build an affilate site: sign up for an affiliate site like Commission Junction or Share a Sale, apply to several vendor programs, and then grab their affiliate feed to publish in your blog. Add your own product reviews and posts, and you’ve got a convenient money maker. Or import several relevant feeds with the vacation feed plug-in and you’ve got an auto-pilot income source.

What other things are you using RSS for? Please share!