Etsy has introduced PubSubHubbub-enhanced feeds as a beta. PubSubHubbub is a protocol with an awful name developed by two Google engineers to make the real time handling of content easier for both publisher and consumer. Here is the definition of PubSubHubbub by Wikipedia:
"PubSubHubbub is an open protocol for distributed publish/subscribe communication on the internet. The protocol extends the Atom and RSS protocols for data feeds. The main purpose is to provide near-instant notifications of change updates, which would improve on the typical situation where a client periodically polls the feed server at some arbitrary interval.
In essence it provides for pushed Atom/RSS update notifications instead of requiring clients to poll whole feeds."
So what exactly does that mean for Etsy and its ecosystem? Superfeedr, the service that is hosting Etsys PubSubHubbub (PuSH) hub, provides some insights:
"How many emails would Etsy need to send to inform their users about price updates, or new products? thousands, every day, to every users. That clearly wouldn’t work. Yet, people also buy on Etsy because they find the information about new products on other sites, whether they are the shop owner’s blogs, wishlist sites or even daily deals!… etc.
Up until a few days ago, these 3rd party sites had to poll Etsy constantly to get updates and find about new products listed. Today they can subscribe to the stream of all Etsy products, which makes it incredibly easier for them to consume the data and keep a fresh and up to date inventory. Building applications like Groupon on top of this feed should be pretty easy = )."
You can find more information on PubSubHubbub at Etsys DeveloperCommunity.
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