For those of you who haven’t heard, WordPress blogs that use the RSS Cloud Plugin are now RealTime! That means that all blogs on the WordPress.com platform and any WordPress.org blogs that opt-in (using this plug-in) will now make instant updates available to any RSS readers subscribed to a new feature called RSSCloud. There are currently only two RSS aggregators that support RSSCloud, Dave Winer’s brand-new reader River2 and LazyFeed.
RSSCloud is an element that has been present in the RSS 2.0 specs but recently is drawing in more attention, especially with the rise of interest in the Real-Time Web. RSSCloud element has just been added to the WordPress code.
Supporting feed readers will now be able to get updates from WordPress blog feeds as soon as they are available, instead of having to poll a server periodically to check for updates. I’m not sure how many of you know, your blog posts typically get picked up by RSS aggregators 15 to 60 minutes after you have posted them. This new element will change that. The feature has already been rolled out.
The official announcement from WordPress HQ (Monday, September 8, 2009):
Today we turned on support for all 7.5 million blogs on WordPress.com something called RSS Cloud, which is basically a way for people to get push notification that your feed has updated.
Why is this important? Right now how most people interact with feeds is by checking that it updated every now and then, usually about once an hour. Can you imagine waiting an hour to get your emails? (The world would probably be more productive.) RSS Cloud is an extra element in your RSS feed that allows subscribers to say “Hey, let me know as soon as you’ve updated, kthx.”
WordPress.com has always supported update pings through Ping-o-Matic so folks like Google Reader can get your posts as soon as they’re posted, but getting every ping in the world is a lot of work so not that many people subscribe to Ping-o-Matic. RSS Cloud effectively allows any client to register to get pings for only the stuff they’re interested in.
What does this mean to you? Well probably not too much yet, there’s only one reader so far (River2) that supports RSS cloud, but we expect there to be more in the future Update: there are two that we know of now). We’re also going to be supporting other ways for people to get push notifications (Jabber, email, Weblogs.com pings, SUP, pubsubhubbub, Twitter… who knows what else) so people will be able to find out about and visit your new blog posts as soon as possible, making blogging a more real-time experience. Since RSS Cloud is so easy to add to RSS, it seemed like a good place to start.
Now, that is what I call a plugin! I can’t wait to see all the news and how this will grow!
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Real time may not seem like much but it is a huge technical leap forward. That’s exciting.