RSS, format used to provide subscribers with new content from frequently updated websites.
An RSS feed is a set of instructions residing on the computer server of a website, which is given upon request to a subscriber’s RSS reader, or aggregator. The feed tells the reader when new material—such as a news article, a blog posting, or an audio or a video clip—has been published on the website. The aggregator monitors any number of sites’ feeds and centrally organizes and displays the new material for the user. The user then has a single source where all of the latest content is automatically available.
Although full-featured software packages are available for RSS reading, many Web browsers include simple aggregators. Personal Web portals also read RSS feeds, offering the additional benefit of portability, since they can be accessed from any computer. Of similar utility are dedicated aggregator websites. Because RSS is a fairly simple standard, with feeds written in the Web-authoring language XML, even a small-scale site can easily incorporate it as a feature.
RSS was originally introduced in 1999 by the American Internet-services company Netscape Communications Corp., for use with its MyNetscape portal. After Netscape abandoned the standard, software maker UserLand picked up development. With the 2002 release of the RSS 2.0.1 specifications, UserLand froze the standard and assigned the copyright to Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Desire in the Web community for further development led to the creation of an alternative syndication standard known as Atom. Many websites offered subscriptions in both formats. However, with the rise of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, use of RSS declined as more people used those services to be notified of new content.