What is RSS
What is RSS
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed format used to publish regularly updated content such as News, Blogs, Articles, Audio/Video, etc. Many websites provide RSS feeds to their viewers as a way for them to stay updated on newly added content. An RSS feed is made up of a standardized XML-formatted file which is updated each time new content is added to the website. This allows the user to use a RSS Reader to view the content feeds of selected websites in one place, without having to visit each website individually. The RSS reader will allow you to ‘subscribe’ to the website feeds of your choice, and will provide you with an interface to view and monitor the feeds, downloading new content when it becomes available. You may often see the RSS icon (
) on various websites. This icon is an indicator that the website provides an RSS feed which you can then subscribe to. See the article How to use RSS for a detailed explanation on subscribing to and viewing RSS feeds.
History of RSS
The very first version of RSS was created by Netscape for use on the My.Netscape.Com web portal. At first, this version of RSS was known as RDF Site Summary because of the fact it used a data format known as RDF(Resource Description Framework). It was later renamed Rich Site Summary in version 0.91 and had RDF elements removed. Netscape later stopped development and use of RSS around April 2001. In September of 2002, RSS 2.0 was released by the RSS-DEV Working Group. RSS was then renamed as Really Simple Syndication. This version incorporated backward-compatibility with RSS 0.92. Because of the fact Netscape had no involvement in the development of this version, they could not legally make an official claim on the RSS name or format. This started a controversy as to which entity was the proper publisher of RSS. Between 2005-2006, RSS gained major popularity and was being used by many websites and users. It was then that the official RSS icon was decided upon by major web browsers. There are now millions of websites that provide RSS feeds to their users and it is now very common practice to do so.