It looks like I picked the right year to focus on adding more blogs and more RSS (also known as XML) feeds to my sites!
From the Pew Internet & American Life Project site:
By the end of 2004 blogs had established themselves as a key part of online culture. Two surveys by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in November established new contours for the blogosphere: 8 million American adults say they have created blogs; blog readership jumped 58% in 2004 and now stands at 27% of internet users; 5% of internet users say they use RSS aggregators or XML readers to get the news and other information delivered from blogs and content-rich Web sites as it is posted online; and 12% of internet users have posted comments or other material on blogs. Still, 62% of internet users do not know what a blog is.
If you're one of the 62% who don't know what a blog is or what RSS is all about, let me recommend the following sites to start learning about them.
RSS was co-developed by Dave Winer and you should read about Radio Userland, the product I use to manage this blog and nearly 5,000 pages on several websites. Also, be sure to read All about RSS.
Another good resource, and one that keeps getting better, is written by Ken Evoy. One of Ken's claims to fame is presiding over the company that developed Site Build It!, which I think is the best web design, hosting, and promotion service on the planet. I am one very happy customer. The product just keeps getting better. Visit the Site Build It! link first so you can see where he's coming from. Then, go read the information he wrote about RSS: Really Simple Syndication for his Site Build It! customers.
I spent several months in late 2004 developing my blogging infrastructure and staking my claim on several blogs at blogger.com. Now that the development work is mostly done, I can pass along newsworthy information to a wider audience faster and more efficiently than ever before.
Also, from the other side of the story, I use Radio Userland to read others' RSS feeds using the news aggregator that is built in. I subscribe to a little over 50 feeds and read them on a more-or-less daily basis. It's a lot easier to read the RSS feed and then click on a link that interests me than it is to remember to go to all 50 of those sites and try to find the new information.
I'm to the point now that I'd rather get newsletters and site updates in an RSS feed than in an email message or newsletter.
I have commented on quite a few blogs and I always meet an interesting person on the other end when he or she responds to my comments.
One of the most interesting recent developments -- for me at least -- has been the addition of RSS feeds to the Site Build It! customer forums. Now, instead of having to go to the forum every day, I added the RSS feed and I can easily read down the list of posts to see which ones I want to read and perhaps respond to. This is a very busy forum, and the addition of the RSS feed has shaved a couple of hours off my forum reading time every day.
I think we'll be seeing much more about blogs (also known as weblogs or journals), RSS, XML, and similar topics this year.
If you have a business with information that changes on a regular basis, you should look into blogs and RSS syndication.
2:38:11 AM 
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