RSS is a Web content Syndication format; its name is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. RSS is a dialect of XML. All RSS files must conform to the XML 1.0 specification, as published on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) website.
RSS is a protocol, an application of XML that provides an open method of syndicating and aggregating Web content. Using RSS files, you can create a data feed that supplies headlines, links, and article summaries from your Web site. Users can have constantly updated content from web sites delivered to them via a news aggregator, a piece of software specifically tailored to receive these types of feeds.
RSS is the hottest thing in Web communication. It powers many popular applications such as weblogs, knowledge management networks, and news syndication.
Weblogging, a term coined by Jorn Barger in December 1997, is one of the most popular and fast growing applications of RSS. A blog is someone's personal dated 'log' frequently updated with new information about a particular subject or range of subjects.
RSS is changing the world of publishing news and searching for news.
A brief history:
The original RSS, version 0.90, was designed by Netscape as a format for building portals of headlines to mainstream news sites. It was deemed overly complex for its goals; a simpler version, 0.91, was proposed and subsequently dropped when Netscape lost interest in the portal-making business. But 0.91 was picked up by another vendor, UserLand Software, which intended to use it as the basis of its weblogging products and other web-based writing software.
In the meantime, a third, non-commercial group split off and designed a new format based on what they perceived as the original guiding principles of RSS 0.90 (before it got simplified into 0.91). This format, which is based on RDF, is called RSS 1.0. But UserLand was not involved in designing this new format, and, as an advocate of simplifying 0.90, it was not happy when RSS 1.0 was announced. Instead of accepting RSS 1.0, UserLand continued to evolve the 0.9x branch, through versions 0.92, 0.93, 0.94, and finally 2.0.
What is Syndication?
Syndication is the process of sharing content among sites. A link that says Syndicate this site, RSS, or XML means that the headlines, a link, and an entry description for each new weblog entry are made available for others to use on their websites or to access through a newsfeed reader program.
What is a "newsfeed reader" program?
Rather than manually checking in on each of the weblogs or news sites that you enjoy, you can instead use a newsfeed reader program that will compile all of the latest headlines and excerpts of your favorite sites that have enabled RSS - sometimes known as Really Simple Syndication. With a newsfeed reader you can easily and freely subscribe to content from enabled websites.
For example, say there were several cooking weblogs that interested you. Rather than looking at each one everyday for new content, you could subscribe to their new content - their "news feeds"- in your newsfeed reader program, which with the click of one button would show you a list of the headlines of all new entries from all the sites to which you subscribe. Clicking on the headline would give you an excerpt for the entry and a link to the actual site. This way you could more easily choose to read the entries that interested you the most.
Why is RSS a good thing?
For the content viewer, the ability to subscribe to content using RSS means that you can easily get content that you want without every having to worry about spam. The content doesn't go to your email box, it goes to a news feeder. You can subscribe or unsubscribe to whatever content you want.
For the content provider, you can help popularize your site by making it really easy for people to keep up-to-date with your latest entries.
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