RSS Feed

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What Does RSS Feed Mean?

An RSS feed is an up-to-date information or list of notifications that a website delivers to its subscribers. RSS means “rich site summary” or “really simple syndication.”

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Techopedia Explains RSS Feed

An RSS feed is read by an RSS reader or a feed reader, which can be either Web based, a standalone desktop application or a mobile application. The reader aggregates all the RSS feeds that a user is subscribed to and presents them in its UI; this avoids the need for the user to go to each website just to read the updates.

An RSS feed is delivered in XML format, allowing maximum compatibility between readers.

Before the advent of RSS feeds, websites sent subscribers email notifications regarding new content. This was not optimal, however, as some emails could end up in the junk folder or mixed with other emails, plus the fact that the emails are formatted differently. In contrast, an RSS reader presents all the feeds using its own interface.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.