Own Every Feed Type

Every organization publishes content in three different frequencies, but many don’t realize they’re neglecting the most important one by outsourcing it.

No feeds are typically static websites. They have a single URL, which usually shows the same content no matter when you visit it. They are great as a source of truth, for timeless content and for diving deep into a topic.

Slow feeds are examples like online magazines or forums. Like static websites, every content piece has its own URL, but additionally there is also a URL for a collection of content, most often displayed as a feed, which updates when new content is published. Newsletters are also slow feeds. They don’t necessarily have a URL for each post/mail, but one can also subscribe to a collection of new posts with every email being a content piece of this feed. Slow feeds are usually updated on a weekly or monthly basis. They tend to be medium or long form content and allow deeper thought processes. Slow feeds only try to get our attention occasionally.

Fast feeds are what you get on social media platforms. Technically they work similar to slow feeds with having one URL per content piece and also one for the feed itself. The difference is that subscribers receive new content every day, every minute or even more frequently. A never-ending stream of new information incentivises subscribers to repeatedly check fast feeds to know if and which new content was published. Fast feeds are a powerful force that tends to pull people in.

What’s interesting about distinguishing digital publishing by its frequency, is that organization can use these categories to reflect on how they publish their content. Does your company publish content across all three feed types? But, more importantly: Does your organization own every feed type?

I had this thought at my current organization when we discussed a question that many companies ask themselves: How do we get people to repeatedly come to our website? Most often the answer to this question is to create content on external fast feeds (social media), which then link to your own “no feed” website. But the incentive to come back to a website with static content is in its nature quite low and organizations have no control over how, when, and even if their content is shown to subscribers in these fast feeds, since they don’t control them.

A much better answer is that organizations need to start offering all three feed types on their website:

• no feed: a couple of static pages about the organization
• slow feed: a blog, newsletter or magazine for medium to long form content
• fast feed: a page with smaller more frequent content pieces, that people can refresh, come back to or even subscribe via RSS or activity pub

Decentralized social networks and standards like activity pub are gaining traction. We are entering a new era of digital publishing, where it will become the norm for organizations to own all their feeds. The only question is: How long will it take for your organization to enter this new era?

The first necessary step towards decentralizing fast feeds is that organizations realize they currently don’t own their fast feed and instead completely outsource an extremely important part of their digital publishing strategy.

The second step is that they begin offering fast feeds on their own websites. This can be done while still publishing the same content to external platforms. It means creating a dedicated space for a fast feed on their website, where short-form content is published more frequently. This can then be improved by offering a subscription mechanism like RSS. And later it can evolve to implementing or paying for a hosted activity pub server, so that anyone in the fediverse can subscribe to their fast feed.

Fast feeds should be liberated from centralized social media platforms and their owners. There is nothing that’s stopping organizations from publishing fast feeds on their own website, except for not realizing how important it is. The more organizations do it, the stronger this decentralized network will become. It’s a one time investment with a huge return, because organizations effectively skip the middleman and take back control over how their short form content is being distributed.

Every organization should own their feeds, including the fast one.