RSS Feeds

RSS is a family of XML file formats for web syndication used by (amongst other things) news websites and weblogs. The abbreviation is used to refer to the following standards:

Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91)
RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9, 1.0 and 1.1)
Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)
The RSS formats provide web content or summaries of web content together with links to the full versions of the content, and other meta-data. This information is delivered as an XML file called RSS feed, webfeed, RSS stream, or RSS channel. In addition to facilitating syndication, RSS allows a website's frequent readers to track updates on the site using a news aggregator.

Usage
RSS is widely used by the weblog community to share the latest entries' headlines or their full text, and even attached multimedia files. (See podcasting, broadcatching and MP3 blogs.) In the late 1990s, use of RSS spread to many major news organizations, including Reuters, CNN, and the BBC. Under various usage agreements, providers allow other websites to incorporate their "syndicated" headline or headline-and-short-summary feeds. RSS is now used for many purposes, including marketing, bug-reports, or any other activity involving periodic updates or publications.

A program known as a feed reader or aggregator can check RSS-enabled webpages on behalf of a user and display any updated articles that it finds. It is now common to find RSS feeds on major web sites, as well as many smaller ones.

Client-side readers and aggregators are typically constructed as standalone programs or extensions to existing programs like web browsers. See List of news aggregators for a list of for various operating systems.

Web-based feed readers and news aggregators require no software installation and make the user's "feeds" available on any computer with Web access. Some aggregators syndicate (combine) RSS feeds into new feeds, e.g. take all football related items from several sports feeds and provide a new football feed. There are also search engines for RSS feeds like Feedster, Technorati, Pluck or Plazoo.

On web pages, RSS feeds are typically linked to with an orange rectangle with the letters XML () or RSS ().

 
 

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