What is RSS (layman's terms, please!)?

Question

I see "RSS feed" all over the internet now. What, in VERY elementary terms, is it? Thanks.

Answer 1

It's pretty much an automatic updater of sorts. Every time the web page owner/programmer puts something new up, and you check the RSS program, it will check, and show you everything new the owner/programmer put up within a range of 10 recent things, 20, and so on. The advantage of it is that it sums everything up, and avoids having to load up all the things you don't want/need to see. Ex: You check the news every day on a slow computer, and ads, old articles, and things that  you don't care about slow your computer down further. You download the RSS, and then it practically shows you a Table of Contents, and then you click the ones you want to download and look at. I say all this at a Mac Owner's stand-point, so I've never used the RSS on my computer, but I use it often on my PSP, which works on several websites, so my info. may not be 100% correct.

Answer 2

Just a web feed of info.. like a news feed.

Answer 3

RSS is a standard format for syndicating content on the Internet. The content can be anything! Often information contained in an RSS feed is syndicated on other sites which expands its reach.

Website visitors love RSS because they choose which feeds they wish to subscribe to, if at any point they are unhapy with the content contained in the RSS feed they simply unsubscribe and no longer receive notification of feed updates.

RSS is really a win, win for both subscribers and publishers.

In order to get a better understanding of how RSS works download an RSS reader or use a web aggregator and subscribe to an RSS feed (they are usually indicated by a small orange icon).

Answer 4

RSS is a way to get all the new information from your favorite websites. It is meant to save your time since you will not have to go to these websites individually anymore. You will be able to view all the new content from all your favorite websites in one location.

It requires an RSS reader. Most internet browsers already have this though. Once you subscribe to an RSS, it should show you when something new comes up on the website.