Author: John Fowler

RSS is an XML based format that allows Web sites to publish their materials as lists of items, and to "push" those items to subscribed users, allowing them to stay up to date with the site's contents easily. RSS Readers aka Aggregators are used to monitor those lists and notify the users of any additions or changes made to the site without them having to visit it. RSS readers can be found in various forms, most commonly as stand alone programs, or as browser plug-ins.

Those lists are most commonly referred to as RSS Feeds yet they are also known as RSS Channels, Web feeds and RSS Streams.

A typical way for an Item in an RSS feed to be presented is to have it consist of a headline, and possibly a short description of the full item's contents. The headline and the description will also function as a link that once clicked on will direct the reader to the web address the item is located in.

The news industry was the first to adopt this format and major news sites such as CNN began offering RSS feeds. While various news feeds are still its main use nowadays, RSS can be used for any type of activity that is based on publishing and updating contents periodically. Items subject to "pushing" are not limited to written materials such as news stories; Multimedia items such as music and video files may also be pushed. The pushing of audio files is called Podcasting and the one of video files is called Vodcasting, or Video casting.

The term RSS initially stood for Rich Site Summary, later became RDF site Summary and today stands for Really simple syndications. As the frequent name changes suggest this standard has gone through various changes along the years. Yet it is pointless getting into the technicalities of its different permutations as most Web sites offer their feeds in the latest standard, and most RSS readers offer backwards compatibility. On that note it may be a good time to mention the existence of another standard called Atom feeds, one which most readers support as well.