What is RSS?

RSS is a protocol that is used to stay up to date with new publications form sources such as News, Blogs, Newsletters, YouTube and much more. It is a computer readable standard that allows news aggregators (or RSS readers) to collect new content, which removes the need for the user to check every website manually. RSS allows users to create their own personalized news feed from the sources they choose. Over time the RSS standard has evolved and there are many different standards and versions, but most readers support all of them.

How it works

It periodically checks the websites the user wants to follow for updates. There are different standards: RSS, Atom, JSON Feeds, but they all work similarly. They host a list of the around 20 articles of the site, in a computer readable format like XML or JSON. They are all structured slightly differently and provide varying types of data. Most standards support title, description, publishing date, link to the article. Here’s an example of how a feed might look:

How it is used

RSS was first released in 1999. At this time, the Internet was more decentralized and people published their posts on their own websites. To stay up to date with everything, they had to check every website manually to get the new posts. RSS solves this by allowing the reader take over the job of checking the websites. RSS is still used like this today. Every blog and news site has RSS by default, and even sites like YouTube or Reddit support it. RSS is also the base standard for Podcasts. Most RSS readers support even more. They can collect newsletter, podcasts or even check websites that don’t support RSS for updates.

Limitations

However, this decentralized approach also has downsides. Social media sites have a central organization, which makes it easier to implement algorithms and recommendations. This results in a lack of virality and makes it harder for users to discover new sources to follow. Also not every site supports RSS and some sites even block readers.

Conclusion

If you want to follow different sources without relying on a centralized social media platform, you still face the same problem as in 1999, so RSS is still as relevant today as it was then. RSS remains popular among journalists, developers, and researchers who want access to trustworthy sources. Today, users have a wide range of RSS readers to choose from, and most can be tested for free. If you’ve never tried one, you should give it a go. A few examples are:

• ivyreader
• feedly
• innoreader
• feeder