What is an RSS Feed?

04 May 2011

Whenever you visit a blog or a website you will often see a text or an image button that invites you to subscribe to their content via RSS. You might be wondering what this means.

It means you need not visit the website regularly to check the latest updates. As you subscribe, the RSS feeds will bring the updated content to you. Subscribing to RSS feeds allows you to stay updated of the latest content from your favorite sites. It will be time saving for you as you do not need to visit each one individually.

RSS is a short form for Really Simple Syndication. It is also known as Rich Site Summary. RSS makes available to you a list of updated website information. This list may contain items such as news headlines, blog entries, audio or video. An RSS document is called a "feed", which includes full or abridged text of the content with their publishing dates and authorship.Basically, RSS is an XML file which includes this information. The information contained in the XML file is referred to as a "feed". These feeds keep a running list of up-to-date items that are posted on the website. The information in the XML file actually contains the title and description of an item and also the URL of the web page which contains the original content. As the webmasters submit the files to feed directories, the subscribers are able to see the content almost instantaneously after the content has been updated.

As each of the items listed in the feed accompany a link pointing back to the original content on the website, if you are interested to read a specific topic or headline in detail, you just need to click on the link to access the whole content.

As you subscribe to the RSS feed, the updates from the site are sent, via RSS feeds, in what is known as a "feed reader, where the content is made available to you. You need to download a feed reader like the Google Reader or My Yahoo to get the RSS feeds. A feed reader is also called a news aggregator; it is an aggregator of RSS feeds which makes it easy to read the feeds all in one place.

These programs are usually available for free. If you wish to be kept updated on the activities of a blog or a website, you may subscribe to the blog or websites RSS feed, and the updated information of those sites will begin to show up in your feed reader.

RSS feeds have revolutionized the way one searches the web for information. RSS feeds help the publishers by allowing them to routinely syndicate their content and it helps the readers to subscribe to timely updates from their chosen websites. Suppose you are a YouTube user. You can follow your favorite channel or director via RSS feeds.

RSS feed is immensely helpful also from the point of view of the website owners. These feeds help the website owners to send their new entries to the subscribers almost instantaneously, by submitting the feeds to several directories. This increases the traffic to their website. If you have a website and you post new contents frequently, you need RSS feed on your site to keep your readers informed. Using really simple syndication in your website will also enable you to reach your potential users or customers.