What Is RSS Feed?

Written by Simon Barker on March 28, 2008 · Filed under Blogging, Internet 

As you’re visiting websites these days, your probably coming across this symbol (or a variation of it) more and more, it indicates that there is a RSS Feed available for the site, but what is RSS Feed?

I’m sure there’s a lot of people out there who know exactly what an RSS feed is, but I keep getting blank looks when I mention it to people, so I thought I’d write a quick post highlighting what it can do.

So what is it? It essentially means that rather than websites being a one-way system, whereby you have to go and visit them to see if there is anything new on the site, with a subscription to the site’s RSS feed, it will deliver the new content to you in a number of different ways, either by sending you an email or if you are using a news reader, such as the very good Google Reader.

All of your various websites that you have subscribed to the feeds of will appear in just the one place which saves you all the browsing around checking sites only to find nothing has changed.

So what is RSS Feed then?

A simple analogy that I give to people when they ask me that question is…

“It’s like going the newsagents everyday to see if any of your favourite magazines have published a new issue – whereas you could subscribe to them and have them delivered to the comfort of your own home once they’ve been published!”

Take a look at the following video which explains it all much better than I ever could hope to.





Hopefully that’s helped to answer any questions as to what the RSS feed is, so why not test it out by registering for email updates or try clicking on one of my orange RSS feed buttons and get subscribed in Google Reader?

RSS Feed Explained in Steps

I hope you’ve found this explanation and walk-through useful, if you have any problems or questions, just let me know in the comment field below.

Are you new to using RSS feeds? If so, do you feel that you have a better understanding of the concept? What do you think to it? Are you going to use it from now on?