What RSS Is and Why You Should Use It

So much content is available to us these days over the internet, and keeping up with all of it can be pretty difficult at times. A few years ago, I could spend hours checking on a handful of sites every day for new content. Not only did that take a lot of time, it was also difficult to keep track of what I had viewed already and what was new. Luckily, I found out about RSS feeds and “subscribing” to sites, and what a difference that has made!

Essentially, what RSS (and other labels such as “Feed”, “XML” or “Atom”) is, is a standardized format in which websites can publish (syndicate) updates that have been made to their website. Since the format of this content is standard across websites, clients (often referred to as “feed readers”) can read these feeds and collect them all into one single location. This way, you only have to view your feed reader to receive updates to all your favorite sites.

You could think of it like an e-mail inbox, and when a site posts new content, you get a new email with the new content. It’s really as simple as that (for us, the end-user). Pretty convenient, huh?

Now, not every website offers a feed, and usually only parts of the website are available as a feed. But, it’s a technology that has really taken off the past few years, and you’ll find a feed for just about every popular website out there. YouTube has them, Twitter does, all of your big News companies use them, they used them for the Olympics, almost all blogs come standard with them now (ours has it!), and many, many other sites are using them.

These feeds are great. I hope I’ve established that. Hopefully now you’re wondering how to start using them. First, you should choose a feed reader. I personally like the free Google Reader, but there are many other ones. Some other popular free web-based ones include Bloglines, Newsgator, and Netvibes. (I prefer web-based ones because you can access them from wherever you are, on any computer.) Even Microsoft Outlook has a built in feed reader these days.

Once you’ve picked a reader, you can start looking for the feeds and “subscribing” to them. Chances are, the sites you like going to on a daily or weekly basis already have a feed. You’ve probably already seen the RSS icon before () on sites. This means they have a feed available, and it’s normally as easy as clicking on that icon (or the link associated with it), and following the steps. For example, if you look at the right column of our blog, you’ll see that RSS icon. Feel free to use our feed to test out the process!

Another way to look for a feed is to use your browser. Almost all modern browsers show an icon when a feed is available for the page you’re on.

Firefox:

Safari:

IE8:

Clicking this icon will take you through a similar process for subscribing to the feed.

Once you’ve subscribed to a few feeds, go ahead and check them out in your feed reader. Once you view each update, it should mark it as being read so you can keep track of what you’ve looked at and what you haven’t seen yet.

The beauty of RSS feeds and the readers is the fact that it allows you to view updates for a bunch of sites all in one location. I am currently tracking 27 different websites through my Google Reader. Think how long that would take if I had to visit each site and track down the updates!

I hope you’ll find RSS feeds as useful as I do.