eRealMedia

What is RSS, how it works and why it is important?

RSS is the hottest; most talked and most used technology of the Internet today. By the way, this technology is not new one, it has been there and used by bloggers since 1999. It is only recently it attracted mainstream attention and of course growth. Today almost all major websites and blogs have RSS feeds. If you have no technical background, you might be wondering what I am talking about. So let’s go to main topic straight-What is RSS?

What is RSS?

RSS is actually a short form of words "Really Simple Syndication". It also stands for “Rich Site Summary”. It is an easy way for distributing content for the website or blogs to others. You can easily distribute a list of headlines, update notices, and sometimes content to a wide number of people. It is used by computer programs that organize those headlines and notices for easy reading.

How does RSS work?

RSS works by having the website author maintain a list of notifications on their website in a standard way. This list of notifications is called an "RSS Feed". People who are interested in finding out the latest headlines or changes can check this list. Special computer programs called "RSS aggregators" have been developed that automatically access the RSS feeds of websites you care about on your behalf and organize the results for you. (RSS feeds and aggregators are also sometimes called "RSS Channels" and "RSS Readers".) Producing an RSS feed is very simple and hundreds of thousands of websites now provide this feature, including major news organizations like the New York Times, the BBC, and Reuters, as well as many weblogs.

Why RSS is Important?

Most people are interested in many websites. They are interested in change of their content in unpredictable manner. Examples of such websites are news sites, community and religious organization information pages, product information pages, medical websites, and weblogs. Repeatedly checking each website to see if there is any new content can be very tedious and time consuming. Of course you can join mailing list for that site, but how many will like reading so many emails everyday and make mailbox crowded. Furthermore organizing these mailboxes is hard and tedious. RSS is a better way to be notified of new and changed content. Notifications of changes to multiple websites are handled easily, and the results are presented to you well organized and distinct from email.