If you haven’t heard, or just have no idea what the heck it meant, WordPress has released the RSSCloud, a plugin that allow blog updates to be instantly available to an RSS reader. In a sense, your WordPress blog can now become a real-time platform like Twitter or FriendFeed. Is this feature necessary for your blog? If so, how do you upgrade to this neat feature? Let’s examine:

Why You Need The RSSCloud WordPress Plugin

Did you know that it could take up to 1 hour after you’ve posted content for it be picked up by an RSS aggregator? That’s a long time to wait in today’s real-time web society. By that time your competitors could have posted before you and gotten the news out first, though you may have published it first. Marshall Kirkpatrick made a great analogy on what this essentially means:

This is like the difference between checking your email every once in awhile and using a Blackberry to get new emails pushed to you as soon as they arrive. The subscription method of RSSCloud works more like Instant Messaging than the old method of polling feeds for updates each time you fire up your feed reader.

So do you need it? Not really unless you’re in some sort of time competition, but it’s a valuable plugin that your readers can fully appreciate if you do.

Installing The RSSCloud WordPress Plugin

If you’re ready to take the plunge, here are the steps you need to take to install RSSCloud:
Step 1. Search for the RSSCloud WordPress Plugin in your dashboard under Plugins> Add New for: RSS Cloud (click image below to enlarge)

Step 2. Once you’ve found it (should be the first result) click the “Install” link on the far right. You should then see the following:

Step 3. Before you click “Install Now” please be sure you are using a compatible version of WordPress. Proceed to click “Install Now”. After a few seconds, you should now see the following:

Step 4.

Active the plugin and you’re ready to go!

Pretty simple right?