What is RSS?

Web feed icon

RSS
One-liner definition: it's a type of web feed. Continue reading for the basics of what web feeds are and/or a simple description of how to use web feeds. Otherwise, for anything more detailed or technical, read the Wikipedia definition of RSS.

WEB FEED
Unlike conventional sites which rarely change their contents, blogs (online journal) are usually updated frequently. In order to keep up with what's happening on blogs, there are 'web feeds', 'feed readers' take the content from selected blogs and deliver it to you, all in one place. This means you can scan and select new and updated material without checking blogs all the time.

Web feeds are just a special kind of web page, designed to be read by computers rather than people. They deliver new stuff directly to you as soon as it is published online. You can subscribe to receive new stories and headlines instantly, rather than having to look for the latest updates online. The 'news' can be any kind of content – articles, essays, images, music, video… Subscribing to web feeds is also known as 'syndication' or 'aggregation'.

If you want to know how RSS actually works, read Mark Pilgrim's article: What is RSS?

This article was the basis for my edits to the Wikipedia definition of web feed on 29 Aug 2006.

Ready for Some Stories? by Stephanie, Back in Skinny Jeans
Image used with permission. Read 'The Oprah definition' of RSS; well-written, down-to-earth and informative. Highly recommended!

Benefits

  • Keeping up-to-date with the information you want can be a drag. With feeds, you get the latest news and features delivered directly to you as it happens, without clicking from site to site.
  • You can browse headlines from lots of different sites in one place.
  • Unlike getting website updates by email, there's no email address involved with feeds; so there's no email marketing, no spam, no viruses, no phishing, no identity theft.
  • If you want to stop receiving news, you don't have to send an 'unsubscribe' request; one click and the subscription is gone immediately.

How to use it

You need a feed reader – this is a tool like an email program. It's like getting an email every time one of your subscriptions updates their content, except no email address is required. There are many feed readers – some are online (like a webmail account), some are offline (you download the program to your computer), some are free and some aren't.

You may have come across feed readers already, if you use personalised home page services like My Yahoo or My MSN, you've got a feed reader already – that's how content like news, weather and stock quotes appear on your personal page. You can also add content from any site with feeds to your page to get updates.

Other web-based tools are primarily dedicated to feed reading only. One of the most popular web-based feed readers at this point is Bloglines, which is also free and easy to get started with.

If you use the Firefox browser, you can also receive feeds from your tool bar by using the Live Bookmarks function. The next version of Internet Explorer will add this feature as well.

Finally, there are desktop-based feed readers, e.g Newsgator and Feed Demon, these are like an email program for web feeds. Attensa for Outlook is a feed reader that puts the feeds in your Outlook. You can look for the feed reader that best suits your needs at the RSS Compendium.

How to add feeds to your feed reader

Not all websites currently provide feeds, but it is growing rapidly in popularity and many sites (not just blogs), including the Guardian, New York Times and CNN now provide it. First, look for the subscription or feed options. Many websites have links labelled 'XML', 'RSS' or 'Atom'; or they may have an orange button (see image on top-right of this article).

Then, you can either click the relevant links (e.g. the 'add to my Yahoo!' button, if you're using My Yahoo!) or copy-paste the link in to your feed reader. Sometimes there will be a button for your particular feed reader on the blog that will take you to the appropriate subscription page.

Sources

This definition draws upon the excellent descriptions in the following articles & resources:

Thanks to the authors: Jemima Kiss, Seth Godin, Colin D. Devroe, Hans, Six Apart, BBC & Brian Clark (respectively).

Email me if you have any questions about it at all and I'll do my very best to help.

3 Comments to “What is RSS?”

#1 Posted by Brian (04.12.06 at 20:37 )

Hi Kathleen,

I have been reading your post about RSS and I am a little more clear about what it is, but can you get these updates from these different sites up on a blog? Yesterday I went to eonline.com and saw the option to use RSS along with a chicklet in one of the articles I was reading and I wanted to keep track of this particular one. When I clicked on the link it showed me all this code that I didn't know what to do with. Can you copy code for RSS sites and put the whole article on your own blog or site? I am confused about which way I should do this. I really liked the article and tried to paste it using the RSS option but it showed up all weird with all these symbols and such. I hope you know what I am talking about because I don't know how else to explain it.

Thanks,
Brian

#2 Posted by Kathleen (10.12.06 at 14:52 )

Hi Brian,

I'm always glad to help if I can, so thank you for trusting me to explain things a bit better.

I've emailed you about this, but for the benefit of any readers having the same trouble, here's a summary of the info.

If you've not got one already, Bloglines is probably the best one to get started with and it's free. So, first off, follow that link, open an account, then you can start adding links so you can get your updates.

Thank you for getting in touch, do let me know if I've missed something or if I can help with anything else.

Kx

#3 Posted by Straightforward definition: What is RSS? (Bright Resources) : Inspire With Hope by Kathleen Bright (08.02.09 at 10:40 )

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