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What is RSS ?

Introduction 

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is a medium that allows content publishers to provide news and information from their site in an electronic format. Users consume this information by "subscribing" to the publisher's RSS feeds - they can then see new content without needing to visit the web site every day.

When the user subscribes to a feed, they do not need to give out any personal information and can delete the subscription at any time. In this way RSS is 100% opt-in.

 

How do you subscribe to RSS feeds ?

There are a wide variety of ways a user can subscribe to a feed including online aggregators, desktop and mobile applications and standard browsers. Microsoft have thrown their full weight behind RSS feeds by incorporating an RSS reader within Internet Explorer 7. Firefox also supports feed reading.

With these browsers, clicking on the RSS or feed symbol on a web page offers the user the opportunity to subscribe to the feed. These browsers also automatically detect that a feed or feeds are available when you visit a web page, again allowing the user to subscribe with a single click.

 

What happens after subscribing

The user will have a list of feeds to which they are subscribed listed in their RSS reader or browser and typically feeds with new content since the last time the user checked are shown in bold. The user clicks on the feed and is presented with any new articles. Some feeds contain the full story within each article, others a summary - clicking on the article will take the user to the publisher's web site to see the full story.

Some RSS readers can also be set to popup alerts when there is new content for certain feeds so the user is immediately notified.

 

Other uses of RSS

RSS is also a very important tool for publishers to syndicate their content either via partner web sites or through search directories. The Mediafed system syndicates content automatically to major directories such as Technorati and Google, this improves pagerank and inbound links and opens up new means by which content can be found.