What is RSS

 
What is RSS and why do you care?
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds are an XML format that was created to syndicate news, and be a means to share content on the Web.
Say you want to read updates from more than two dozen sites weekly. Having a way to subscribe to those sites from a central location, instead of needing to visit them individually, is very convenient. I read about 232 sites and blogs, and pull the questions from LinkedIn for three categories.
You can also syndicate Google Alerts to an RSS reader, for example, and save your inbox for real correspondence. I also have a service that tells me if someone is reposting my feed, which is how I know when sites scrape my content.
As a publisher, you want to offer a way for people to subscribe to your content -- and offering a feed along with an option to receive it in the form of email, is the easiest way to do that.
Despite the link sharing taking place on various social networks -- Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+ -- feeds are still a major way to publish and pull content.





[image courtesy of Stephanie Quilao]