What is RSS Anyway?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary or RDF Site Summary depending on who you listen to. It’s also confused with RDF (Resource Description Framework), XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and a variety of other related TLA’s (Three-Letter Acronyms). RSS is actually a family of web syndication protocols which provide information in XML files known as RSS feeds.

The issue is further confused by some “helpful” RSS feed readers, search engines and directories, which claim that RSS feeds always end with the .rss or .xml extension. NOT! In fact, RSS feeds can have almost any file extension or none at all. The current version of WordPress, a popular and free (free for commercial uses too!) blog software package which I use, uses the .php extension for all of the feeds it generates. I suspect that many other blog packages written in PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) code also use that extension for their feeds. Feedburner, a great feed re-publishing service, doesn’t use an extension at all, unless you tell it to use a particular one.

Web-Based Feed Readers

Many RSS feed readers are web-based – you don’t actually have to install anything on your desktop, or even use your own system. Just go online in the internet cafe or the library or on your own computer and you can read any feed you want to. My Yahoo, Bloglines, NewsGator and MyFeedster are some of the popular web-based feed readers, and they’re free. Set up an account at no charge and go feed surfing.

If you set up your own RSS feed, and then tell My Yahoo about it, you’ll wind up with a listing in the Yahoo search engine (which would otherwise be much more difficult to get).

Mozilla vs Microsoft

Today, the Firefox web browser and its email companion Thunderbird, which are the open-source successors of Netscape from Mozilla, come with an RSS feed reader built into the 1.0 release. They also run on most OS platforms. Microsoft is playing catch-up. MS Internet Explorer has no RSS feed reader capability. But you just know it will, and soon. Microsoft sees the potential of RSS and how it’s taking hold across the web. They see Mozilla trying to take the new browser market away from them again. When that happens, anyone who’s not taking full advantage of RSS for their business or personal promotion will be left in the dust. Even if Microsoft enforces a new RSS standard, everyone else will support it, because of the sheer size of the Microsoft-based market. That’s just how it is.