Simplicity is key in order to understand RSS and explain its popularity during the initial boom of website creation and content proliferation. Users are able to select the websites they frequent most and build a one-stop feed to review their favorite content.

It’s the first instance of personalized curation online well before current social media feeds. All this information would then be streamed into a single feed managed and edited by the user. Keeping true to its minimalist presentation of information, RSS nevertheless incorporated more media such as videos and images. In the early days of the Internet, RSS incorporated only text elements, but as the capabilities of the web increased, RSS followed suit. Articles, updates and other posts then become easy to browse in a simplified feed, which is often accessed through a so-called ‘feed reader’. What RSS does is reduce the content of a website to base components generated within simple text files. RSS derives from the phrase ‘really simple syndication’ (though in certain corners of the web, there will be those who insist that the abbreviation stands for ‘rich site summary’). What is RSS?īefore we go anywhere near the significance of RSS or its legacy within the Internet landscape, it behooves to define RSS – to be on the same page as it were.

Social media feeds, YouTube subscriptions, podcast apps and even the ‘new releases’ functions of video streaming platforms are all indebted to the humble RSS for existing in the first place. RSS is the basis upon which a lot of new tools and technologies have been created. We’re here to give you the speed course in RSS and why it’s still useful to talk about RSS today. It’s in the title and it’s why you’re here. It’s RSS – this shouldn’t come to you as a surprise. In today’s era saturated with information, the answer in finding a satisfactory middle ground between our lives and online habits lies in technology that was first pioneered at the dawn of the new millennium. Hit every website at all costs, but also without the repetitive cycle of visiting and re-visiting the same sites multiple times per day. How do we see it all? And how do we see it efficiently?Īfter all, time is a valuable commodity and Internet users face a daily dilemma as to how to spend their precious 24 hours in the best way possible. Back to knowledge base What is an RSS feed and how does it work?

Define rss