What is RSS?

Blogging veterans will already know all about RSS and its uses, however if your new to blog reading you’ll see lots of mention of RSS and maybe wonder what it is. Before writing this article I wasn’t 100% sure as to exactly what it was so I did a bit of digging around to find out more.

Basic Definition
A RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed is universal system that allows websites publishing regularly updating content, to provide an option to subscribe to the RSS feed associated with that content and receive updates as and when new content is published. These RSS feeds are usually used in conjunction with an RSS Reader of some kind, (e.g. Google Reader) which allows the subscriber to receive content from multiple feeds.

Why subscribe to RSS feeds?
The main advantage of the RSS system, only really becomes apparent if you want to check multiple different content sources, such as news sites and blogs. Conventionally you would bookmark these web pages and visit the individual sites every so often to read their latest articles. However when you amass a list of different sites who’s content you wish to regularly check up on this becomes impractical, because loading each website and searching to find the information you want takes time.

Hence having a RSS feed deliver you the latest content from all your favorite websites direct to your reader, allows you to quickly and easily scan through new content and decide what to read and what to ignore. Feed readers update regularly, checking for new content usually every 10 minutes or so. This means you get the content and news almost immediately after it has been published.

Another advantage of online feed readers, (also known as aggregators), such as Google Reader is that you can log into your account from any computer with an internet connection and check all your feeds.

RSS aggregators feed our need for constant information and being up to date (Do you suffer from Infomania?).

Benefits to web publishers/bloggers
Subscribers to your site RSS feed are much the same as subscribers to a magazine. These are your loyal readers. The more you have the better. It means you have an audience. These loyal followers trust what you write and want to keep up to date with it. This is also why many blogs reward their RSS subscribers with prizes and competitions. A high subscriber count gives a good measure of the quality and successfulness of a blog.

Other uses for RSS feeds
Recently a new breed of website has become popular. These sites have very little if any content of their own yet are immensely popular. What they do is show the headlines from a number of similar or related sites. A great example of this is Alltop. Here under various categories you can see what the key players in each categories latest posts are. Under the category Technology, the top of the page shows the latest from popular social media sites Digg, del.icio.us and reddit, images from Flickr, videos from Youtube, the latest from popular news sites then the latest from some blogs such as Wired and a load of other sources.

Give it a go
If you are new to RRS why not give our RSS feed a try, simply click on the big orange RSS button, then you can choose to sign up to an online feed reader or you can view feed updates through your web browser. Alternatively you can enter your Email address, (next to the orange button), to receive updates directly to your email account. Experiment and see what works best for you.

If you want to find out more about the history of RSS, read Mark Pilgrim’s What is RSS.

Already amassed a huge RSS feed list? How do you view your feeds?

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