This article is for non-technical people and newbie's who are having out-of-body experience when they encounter the technical term RSS because they have no idea whatsoever of what this jargon means.

What is RSS?

In a nutshell, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a lightweight XML format designed for easy and efficient distribution of update notices, headlines, and content to many people. In other words, you use RSS to syndicate blogs, a website feed, or virtually all media content online - articles, music, videos, or any digital media. Computer programs use RSS in organizing notices and headlines to make them easy to read.

Here, you subscribe to the website feed, which only means that you do not need to go to the actual site to see the latest content. This allows you to gather all website feeds (provided that they are available) in one central location and saves you from visiting each of your favorite websites individually. Thus, the purpose of RSS is to make syndication more efficient in consuming information that is very important to you.

What problem does it solve?

Are you one of those people who are interested in a number of websites that are regularly updated? Do you always visit news sites, blogs, religious organization and community information pages, medical websites, and product information pages? Do you repeatedly check each site to know if new content is posted? Are you tired of this very tedious routine? RSS solves your problem.

The initial solution to this problem of tracking content updates was email notification. The problem with this early solution is that, receiving email notifications from many websites can be a real headache - they are often disorganized and can overwhelm you. Additionally, notifications are usually mistaken for spam. RSS is a much better method for notifying new and updated content. It allows for easier and more efficient notifications of updates to multiple sites. Moreover, you are presented with organized and distinct results.

How to use RSS feeds?

Website authors maintain a list of notifications, known as RSS feed. People interested in knowing the latest headlines or seeing the latest content can check this notification list. So how do you use RSS feeds? First, you have to select an RSS reader, a software program that gathers and displays RSS feeds.

Each RSS reader has slightly different ways of adding what is called a channel (new feed). All you need to do is to follow the RSS reader directions. Producing RSS feeds is very simple. There are hundreds of thousands of sites that are currently providing this feature. These include major news organizations (Reuters, BBC, the New York Times) and many blogs.

The Future

RSS provides online users and information seekers the convenience they need. It is designed primarily to make each and everyone's life easier. At present, it is very important that you become familiar with RSS because you will a lot more of this technology. If you can keep up-to-date with the current technology wave, you will be less frustrated when you use the Internet.