Internet Terms Explained

I’ve been asked a lot over the last few days what the following four things are, so I thought I’d very briefly explain. Some you know, some you may not but they all help with finding the information you need or getting your message across to others. Isn’t that what the Internet’s about?

RSS
It stands for Real Simple Syndication and it is just that. It lets you gather only the information you want and nothing else. You subscribe to a web site’s feed and you get notified when there is new content. You can tell a website has a RSS feed by the square orange icon (like the picture at the top of this article). If you want to test it out, have a look for the RSS icon on this website or click here.

Twitter
Interesting how this came about, and I was a sceptic at first. It’s microblogging. You have 140 characters to write about whatever you want. You follow people who you want to receive information from and people follow you, usually because they like what you have to say. It’s easy to weed out information you don’t want by just un-following. To find specific information, try the Twitter keyword search.

WordPress
It’s predominantly a platform in which you write blogs but it’s much more than that. If you want to be heard you have to shout and wordpress lets you do that by being optimised for search engines out of the box. If you have a business, band or project you want to share on the web, then wordpress is your ticket. Check it out here.

Ping.fm
A great website that allows you to update most if not all of your social networks in one hit. You can link it to your phone, send pictures and even videos shortly. Check it out here.