There was a time when RSS (Real Simple Syndication) was available solely in the arcana of serious techno geeks, propeller heads and other pocket protector aficionados who had nothing better to do than gaze,bleary eyed into video screens 24/7/365.  Most people didn't know what RSS was or did and most didn't care.  Like most techy stuff, this was all to the good, since it was a source of private amusement and a great income for a lot of these mouse movers and keyboard poounders.

No longer.

It seems that everyone and their brothers are entranced by the little orange square.  In fact, it's no longer little or orange - necessarily.  It can be any color and take on dozens of different shapes and dozens of effects as long as you can elicit the memory of the little orange square with the dot and two curved lines.

People seem to be getting on board with the fact that if you click one of those cute buttons it'll take you to a "Reader" or aggregator of all your favorite blogs so that you don't have to click around from place to place to read each individual one, in turn.  This is called getting the feed. At least, that's what I've heard.  Like news feeds of days gone buy when "wire services" fed stories to newspapers (how quaint!) these blog feeds will let you read what you want when you want in one nice, orderly space.

From what I understand, though, the RSS feed really didn't help with SEO primarily because you didn't have hundreds or thousands of individuals (one can only wish) clicking on your site to get daily updates.  You only had a dozen or so aggregators polling your site and putting it in their special place for their hundreds and thousands of clickers to come.

I have a feeling something is changing. Some blogs I read and, yes, subscribe to through RSS are starting to promote RSS.  Blueprint for Financial Prosperity ( a personal finance blog) had a post dedicated to RSS with a video from Common Craft explaining the whole thing "in Plain English". Here's the topper: Seth Godin - marketing guru to the masses and hoards - on his blog has a post about RSS, Twitter and e-mail syndication.  Now, when Seth Godin gets on board with RSS and starts promoting it for his blog you know something is afoot.

Here's my dilemma.  Where do I find someone to insert one of those cute little icons (not the standard, ugly one that comes with Feedburner) into my newly minted "outside" blog designed by Dakno using the Wordpress platform?  Any help?