What is Pub Sub Hubbub? Well, apart from being a badly named service, it is basically a hub that sits between a server (publisher) and it’s feed users (subscribers). The server talks to Pub Sub Hubbub when content is updated and the Pub Sub Hubbub server then pushes content to individual subscribers dependent on their preferences.

This is innovative in that it actually pushes the content across the web rather than users constantly polling the service. This means that the publisher can save an awful lot of bandwidth and subscribers can receive the updates practically instantaneously.

You can find out more on the project by workers at Google (working outside of Google) here: http://code.google.com/p/pubsubhubbub/

If you’re using Feedburner to manage your RSS feed subscribers (and lets face it why wouldn’t you be? – note to self….), then you can enable Pub Sub Hubbub support. Click on the feed you want to enable, and under the publishing options, look for “ping shot”, and activate the service.