Have you ever wondered what those little orange antenna buttons floating around the Social Source Commons website were for?  Well, my friends, you are about to learn the beauty of “Feeds,” a nifty little feature on SSC that lets you keep track of things that you’re interested in.  And if you already know what “feeds” are, hopefully this post can enlighten you about the rich array of feeds that SSC has to offer.

For the uninitiated, Wikipedia defines a feed as a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content.  They take advantage of RSS technology and are otherwise known as RSS Feeds.  “RSS” stands for Really Simple Syndication.  Using a RSS reader, you can track multiple feeds that track updated information on a website.

For example, let’s say you wanted to know when new tools were added to SSC but didn’t want to keep checking the site at random intervals hoping something new was available.  All you need to do is click on the orange “Feed” button next to the “New Tools” headline on the SSC homepage.  This gives you a link that you can put into your RSS reader.  Then your RSS reader shows you new tools as they are added to SSC.  No more surfing to the home page to see what the newest tool is.  Let the reader do the work for you.  The cool thing about RSS is that readers can collect information on large numbers of feeds and present it in a coherent fashion.

“Feeds” are available for many types of SSC information.  Let’s check out some of the feeds we can follow on SSC:

• Site-wide changes Feed: Track any new activity to SSC
• Newly Added Tools Feed: Track tools added to SSC as they come in
• Per-Tool Feed: Track contributions and changes to a specific tool
• Newly Added Community Toolboxes Feed: Follow additions of community toolboxes
• Per-Toolbox Feed: Keep track of changes to a specific toolbox
• New members Feed: Stay up to date on all the new users of SSC
• User Feed: Follow what changes a specific user is making on SSC
• SSC Blog Feed: Grab the latest blog updates from the SSC homepage

As you can see, “Feeds” can keep you up-to-date on many aspects of Social Source Commons.  Some you probably won’t need, but others might save you a lot of time and provide a powerful dashboard into the knowledge being shared on SSC.  You can also find out more about SSC feeds here.  Happy Feeding!