any social web service, app, community, or
whatever has an RSS feed for you to play with,
which means that a lot of the integration of these
services you may want can be done using RSS.
From showing off your latest tweet to mashing up
a lifestream, it’s all about RSS most of the time.So when you want to flash your latest finished
book saved to aNobii (www.anobii.com),
consider the RSS feed (or its widget) before you
start looking for plugins or hacking your own
solutions. Chances are, the service that you want
to show off your latest actions, saved items, or
whatever from already transmits this data with
RSS.That being said, it’s time to get your hands dirty!THERE IS NO doubt that the social web is
important these days, with Facebook, Twitter,
and Google+ being the most prominent exam-
ples. When used correctly, services like these can
be excellent platforms to promote content, collect
stories, and encourage communication. It is only
natural that most sites today have some sort of
integration with popular social web services,
even if it’s only a simple Share on Facebook or
Send to Twitter button or link.Before you dig into the various techniques used
to display and connect to the social web, it is
important not to forget the most obvious
integration tool offered: RSS feeds. For the
simplest solution, you can use the RSS widget
that ships with WordPress, and it easily lets you
show off content from an RSS feed. And today,INTEGRATING
THE SOCIAL
10 WEB