What is a RSS feed

RSS is that term you hear and see a lot but never really bother to understand what it does. It is not a surprise, as it is a really easy concept to understand. Most people, like me, just briefly read about it on Wikipedia and do not go really deep into it. This article is aimed at people who want to learn more about it and see how they can utilize this simple technology.

Content

• What is a RSS feed?
• How does it look like?
• RSS readers
• Conclusion

What is a RSS feed?

Here is the definition from Wikipedia:

"RSS (RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format."

In simple terms, a RSS feed is just an XML document formatted according to the RSS standard. It can be served from any website, just like an HTML page or any other resource (images, PDFs, MP4, etc.).

But what is it used for? Why is RSS still useful for blogs, news, and content creators? At its core, RSS is a broadcasting mechanism for your website’s content. It’s most commonly used for blogs, but you’ll also find RSS feeds for podcasts, news headlines, product updates, and even torrent trackers. An RSS feed can include metadata about your content — like author, publishing date, short descriptions (excerpts), or even the full article content. This is how you broadcast your latest content to the world, or at least to the people who are listening (subscribed) to your RSS feed.

Think of an RSS feed as your own mini transmitter antenna for your website’s content. The RSS logo even symbolizes this idea. 📡

How does it look like?

So I mentioned XML files and you might be wondering: what is XML? Or maybe you’re thinking, “Isn’t that a dead technology?” While XML is over 20 years old, it’s still the backbone of RSS and many other web feed formats. XML is a markup language, similar to HTML, but with stricter syntax. It’s designed to be both machine-readable and human-readable, making it perfect for structured data like RSS feeds.

If you visited the Wikipedia article above you will see this example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<rss version="2.0">
    <channel>
        <title>RSS Title</title>
        <description>This is an example of an RSS feed</description>
        <link>http://www.example.com/main.html</link>
        <copyright>2020 Example.com All rights reserved</copyright>
        <lastBuildDate>Mon, 06 Sep 2010 00:01:00 +0000 </lastBuildDate>
        <pubDate>Sun, 06 Sep 2009 16:20:00 +0000</pubDate>
        <ttl>1800</ttl>
        <item>
            <title>Example entry</title>
            <description>Here is some text containing an interesting description.</description>
            <link>http://www.example.com/blog/post/1</link>
            <guid isPermaLink="false">7bd204c6-1655-4c27-aeee-53f933c5395f</guid>
            <pubDate>Sun, 06 Sep 2009 16:20:00 +0000</pubDate>
        </item>
    </channel>
</rss>

That’s how a basic RSS feed looks. There’s not much else to it! Of course, you’ll want to generate an RSS feed that includes your own site’s metadata and content. Most modern blogging platforms and content management systems (like WordPress, Gatsby, or static site generators) can automatically generate RSS feeds for you.

If you’re interested in the technical details or want to dive deeper into the RSS standard, check out the Wikipedia article I mentioned earlier.

RSS readers

As mentioned earlier, RSS is a web feed technology that lets you broadcast your content to anyone who wants to subscribe. This “listening” can happen from another website, an RSS reader app, or even a custom aggregator. With just your RSS feed URL, people can get your latest blog posts, news, or podcast episodes without ever visiting your site directly. This process is called web syndication, and it’s a powerful way to distribute your content.

If you follow dozens of blogs or news sites, RSS feeds are the best way to get notifications when new content is published. RSS feed readers (also called news aggregators) are websites or apps where you can add the feeds you want to follow. They format the data for you, present it in a clean UI, and often offer extra features like search, tagging, and offline reading.

RSS feed readers used to be very popular in a pre social media era of the Internet. Nowadays your Facebook or Twitter feed is THE "RSS" feed you use. Do not get me wrong. I think that there is a certain value of the Facebook pages and twitter accounts that aggregate, select and share interesting content. However, it is rarely of good quality, and there is also this problem that everyone is sharing the same "hot" thing. Also, it has the tendency to get lost pretty quickly in your social media feed.

With RSS feed you do not have duplication and you can fully focus on just the content itself. I believe it is of great value NOT to be distracted by other non relevant stuff in this era of social media and creating content for the sake of creating content.

Another alternative to social media are newsletters. They are very important, but I believe they are better suited for other purposes. Newsletters also have some downsides in terms of ease of use. Although you can automate the process of sending a bunch of emails as soon as you release a new post, it is much simpler to do this with RSS feeds. Again, I am not making a point against email newsletters. They are a very powerful marketing tool, but for content syndication I believe that RSS feed concept is the best. This is what they were created for in the first place. Of course, there are some other competing technologies to RSS (namely Atom and JSON feeds), but the concept is still the same.

The 3 most popular RSS feed readers in my opinion are:

1. Feedly
2. Inoreader
3. NewsBlur

I am personally using Inoreader and I love it. It is simple and works as expected.

Conclusion

Whether you’re a blogger, developer, or just a content consumer, RSS feeds remain one of the best technologies for aggregating news, blog updates, and web content. While there are more sophisticated solutions out there, for simple use cases like blogs, podcasts, and news, RSS is still the gold standard for content syndication and web feeds. I recommend using RSS alongside social media and newsletters — RSS is perfect for your returning audience who want to stay updated with your latest posts.

If you haven’t already, check out my RSS feed and subscribe if you find my posts useful. Please help me reach a wider audience by sharing on your favorite social media platform. 😎 Thank you!

What do you think about RSS feeds? Are you using them? Do you have another opinion on this topic? I’d love to hear from you — let me know what you think through my contact form below.

P.S. While writing this blog, I tried out a tool that a good friend and initial mentor of mine created. It’s called 🚀 Quill.app. I enjoyed writing in it and think it’s a really cool app. It’s currently in open beta, so grab yourself a free account and take your writing management to the next level.