People have asked me how I manage to read so much in a day and share it so quickly. If I did what I did the conventional way, that is, go to each individual site, click on the article I wish to read, and then copy that article and link it through my favourite sharing sites that would pretty much be a full time job. If you follow my friendfeed, twitter, or just see my facebook updates you’ll notice that I can burn through things very quickly. I can rip through things fast not because I am a fast reader, but because I have the right tools. One thing that helps me is this magical thing called RSS – Really Simple Syndication (or something like that). Like all things web related, it can be a little confusing and not so simple at all. Let me break it down for you. Please note, I am not going into the technical details of RSS, only what it is and what it can do for you.

RSS is a standardized web format(s) that let’s publishers (like me) publish content to readers (like you) without the reader having to actually visit the site. It has the advantage for publishers to reach out to a wider audience and for readers because they can aggregate, or collect, all of their favourite RSS feeds into one place. Let’s use a real world example to illustrate:

I like to read blogs such as Lifehacker, Mashable, My Mom is a Fob, F My Life. Instead of going to each individual website hoping to see an update, I can subscribe to their feeds and use a feed reader to view them. This gives me the advantage in that I do not have to visit each site individually, and only have to use my feed reader (4 sites all gathered into 1 place, pretty sweet). It also has the advantage in that content will only be shown if it is new or if I haven’t read it. So, I don’t have to frequently check the site, instead when the site updates I’ll get the update automagically in my reader. Cool, right? The updates come to me, not the other way around. Pretty much all sites that update these days have a RSS feed, including mine. Just look for the RSS icon. Clicking on this icon will allow you to subscribe to the RSS feed.

Now you’ll have to find a RSS reader. RSS readers come in all shapes and sizes. You can have a web based reader, desktop reader, mobile reader for your phone, browser based reader, etc. I choose to use Google Reader, because Google is awesome and since I have a Google Account (who doesn’t nowadays?) it saves me from signing up for another service. Plus Google Reader is dead simple to use, flexible, and has good search capabilities. Now everytime I come across a site I like, if I wish to add it to my regular reading list I can simply subscribe to its feed by clicking on the RSS icon, choosing Google Reader as my reader of choice, and new updates show up. Now instead of going to a zillion different sites, I can just open up Google Reader and enjoy my reading in a nice, easy to follow format. You can organize your feeds and subscribe to feeds you are interested in reading instead of having to go through information you aren’t interested in a lot faster now.

On top of that, I now use a Firefox extension called Feedly that does something even better, it takes your Google Reader and digests all the information to make it really nice and easy to follow. Thanks to Feedly, I’m able to burn through things even faster than before. It also has a really AWESOME feature that let’s me easily share things as well. If I find a site I like all I have to do is click a button and that gets shared through Google Reader, which then propagates through to my twitter and friendfeed and on to Facebook.

If all of that is confusing for you, you could try a site like Alltop, which does a lot of the subscribing stuff for you. All you have to do is create an account, choose the topics you are interested in, and Alltop will do the rest. Its easier to do for beginners, but not as flexible. Worth a consideration if you just want to see if RSS is right for you. If you enjoy reading on the web, than I would say it is.