A now "deceased" website on RSS marketing and RSS publishing - a look at the history of internet marketing

Rok Hrastnik

A Note from the Author: The RSS Diary is Closed

rssdiary.marketingstudies.net was built to help marketers get the most from RSS. However, much has changed since the site was last updated in 2007 - and it's pretty fair to say that it's now completely outdated.

Since I've moved on to other interests in internet marketing years ago, the site is now officially closed, and only remains online as an archive of a part of internet marketing's past. This is how we used to see RSS between 2004 - 2007. We don't, anymore, but there's no harm in having a small part of our past available online.

With that, I'm also making the e-book that started all of this, Unleas the Marketing and Publishing Power of RSS, available for free download.

Rok Hrastnik [to contact and/or follow me: LinkedIn l Facebook]

Appcasting: Delivering Software Updates via RSS

 
 

MasterNewMedia.org has a great article today on using RSS to deliver software updates to existing customers/users. Well, you can always count on Robin and his team to get leading-edge news and developements from the new media world, and this is certainly one of them.

While I have already written about this in "Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS", the "thing" finally got a name: Appcasting, as it was named by Fraser Speirs.

What is Appcasting? Appcasting is the practice of using the 'enclosure' feature of RSS 2.0 feeds to deliver updates and release notes for new software applications. The name Appcasting is by analogy with Podcasting, which is the practice of delivering audio files as RSS 2.0 enclosures.

The idea is this: the developer publishes an RSS 2.0 feed, each item of which describes a new release of a particular software product. The items' descriptions may contain release notes or other information about what's new in this release.

How does Appcasting help the users?
When your users are using RSS aggregators which support the RSS 2.0 enclosure feature, it becomes trivial for them to keep up to date with your software releases. Aggregators such as NetNewsWire 2 support downloading of enclosed content right in the aggregator.

How do I set up an Appcast Feed?
It's easy. There's really nothing technologically new here beyond RSS 2.0 itself. All you have to do is create your feed and in each item include a line like:

In the example, the url attribute is the direct download URL for your app, length is the length of the file in bytes and type is the file's MIME type.

Sounds complicated? It really isn't ...

The premise of appcasting is simple: give your customers/users an easy way to receive and download new software updates, patches etc. for your software, without forcing them to keep a constant eye on your web site to see if there's anything new.

Basically a customer service RSS application, which proves just how valuable RSS can become for customer relationship management activities and strategies.

Unleash the Marketing and Publishing Power of RSS
Rok Hrastnik Avtor: Rok Hrastnik

Rok Hrastnik is an experienced international internet marketer and manager in Central & Eastern Europe, lead by the conviction that marketers should first be driven by measurable business outcomes: sales and profits.

He is currently serving as the International Internet Director at Studio Moderna, the leading CEE direct response TV & multi-channel retailer, managing their internet operations across 22 countries (Russia, Poland, Czech Republic, Turkey, Romania, the Baltics and others).