Just exactly what are RSS Feeds?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and is used to describe the technology used in creating feeds. RSS is one of the two main families of web syndication formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts; Atom is the other. Web syndication is a form of syndication in which a section of a website is made available for other sites to use. All web feed formats are based on XML (Extensible Markup Language), a text-based computer language used to describe and distribute structured data and documents.

Syndication benefits both the websites providing information and the websites displaying it. For the receiving site, content syndication is an effective way of adding greater depth and immediacy of information to its pages, making it more attractive to users. For the transmitting site, syndication drives exposure across numerous online platforms. This generates new traffic for the transmitting site — making syndication a free and easy form of advertisement.

Web feeds (RSS feeds) have some advantages compared to receiving frequently published content via email:

• When subscribing to a feed, users do not disclose their email address, so users are not increasing their exposure to threats associated with email: spam, viruses, phishing, and identity theft.
• If users want to stop receiving news, they do not have to send an "unsubscribe" request; users can simply remove the feed from their aggregator.
• The feed items are automatically "sorted" in the sense that each feed URL has its own sets of entries (unlike an email box, where all mails are in one big pile and email programs have to resort to complicated rules and pattern matching).
A "Feed Reader" is required for using Web Feeds. This tool works like an automated e-mail program, but no e-mail address is needed. The user subscribes to a particular web feed, and thereafter receives updated contents, every time updating takes place. Feed Readers may be online (like a webmail account) or offline. Recently a number of mobile readers have arrived to the market. An offline web feed is downloaded to the user's system. Feed readers are used in personalized home page services like iGoogle or My Yahoo or My MSN to put content such as news, weather and stock quotes appear on the user’s personal page. Content from other sites can also be added to that personalized page, again using feeds.

A web feed is a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content. Content distributors syndicate a web feed, thereby allowing users to subscribe to it. Making a collection of web feeds accessible in one spot is known as aggregation, which is performed by an Internet aggregator. A web feed is also sometimes referred to as a syndicated feed.

In the typical scenario of using web feeds, a content provider publishes a feed link on their site which end users can register with an aggregator program (also called a feed reader or a news reader) running on their own machines; doing this is usually as simple as dragging the link from the web browser to the aggregator. When instructed, the aggregator asks all the servers in its feed list if they have new content; if so, the aggregator either makes a note of the new content or downloads it. Aggregators can be scheduled to check for new content periodically.

To explain all of the above in a visual context, see below:

1)
An RSS link appears on a website indicating feeds are available.

2)
After clicking on the RSS link you are taken to an RSS directory which gives you a list of all the feeds available.

3)
After making a selection of feed, you are directed to a page which tells you more about feeds and how it will work. Then it asks you to click one more time to "subscribe to this feed".

4)
Next, a screen will come up telling you where the feed will be saved on your computer and how to access it.

5)
To view your feeds, click the Favorites Center button and then click Feeds.

That is exactly what RSS feeds are!