There are three ways to overthrow a ruling class: replace it with another knot of arrogant, elitist swine (why bother?); rise up en masse with pitchforks and torches (risky and bloody, with an unproven track record); or infiltrate their ranks until everyone’s an aristocrat.
Fortunately, when it comes to the ruling class of the blogospheriverse, the doors to the castle aren’t just unguarded — they’re wide open, with a big welcome mat. The digerati want you to be one of them. (It’s instinctive; most of us went through high school without many friends, and we’re making up for lost time.)
But there’s a moat around the castle: the chasm between what most people know about blogging now, and what you need to know to start using this new medium to its fullest. And while a lot of the folks inside the castle really do want your company, they haven’t always been that good at helping commoners leap the moat and become (to really, really strain the metaphor) counts, duchesses and (ahem) URLs.
Enter Alex, Marquess of Markup and holder of the Tagging Tiara, who has built a nice, four-lane box girder bridge to the future: RSStocracy. (I lent a hand with some of the rivets and lane painting.)
At its core is a 10-step program for taking your blog-reading to the next level by using newsfeeds and aggregators — and if neither of those words means much to you, you need to visit her new site.
If they do mean something to you, and you have a blog of your own, then consider adding one of her buttons (tastefully built by yours truly) to your sidebar and helping your readers make the jump themselves:
