Pipes are easy to use, get started here.
Experienced web developers have used some type of news feed aggregator, and others might have used one, with out even knowing it. Take my page for example, this is a Google Blogger Blog. In my admin panel, I have the option of choosing news feeds. I keep up on the big three, Microsoft, Apple and Google. This is through an aggregator. Also on this page is a Web/ Graphic Designer job post resource from Yahoo Pipes.
Pipes allows you to pull data from the web from a variety of built in tools, and then "pipe" them into your own source, which can then be easily shared and configured to display the data in a variety of ways.
I use them for my current company I am working for, to display news feeds for the CAD CAM industry from a variety of sources. Instead of going to various feeds, or reading my syndicated rss feeds, I can get all this data in one place, and share it with our web visitors. See this Cad Cam news feed here.
I am testing out some other valuable cloned and customized pipes for flickr photos and google videos. The cool thing about pipes, is that there are many already created, and if you publish and share yours, then other people can view the back end code, and learn how its done.
This can be beneficial for SEO purposes, as you can have relative key word data, auto populate the sights you are working on. This adds value to the site, for search engines, but also to your clients, and web public as they can get valuable info from your site, and that gives them a reason to come back, instead of looking some place else for this info.
In summation, Yahoo pipes are a great resource, anyone seeking to collect and share content from multiple sources should check out.
