What is RSS?

RSS = your customised, interactive newspaper which updates all by itself

RSS – which stands for Really Simple Sindication – is a web technology which, as a user, will basically allow you to do three things:

1. Save yourself lots of time;
2. Help you to stay up-to-date with your favourite blogs and news sites;
3. Allow you to read more of your favourite information;

The big orange symbol with the white lines on it is the most famous RSS symbol. When you see that symbol, the blog or site you’re reading does RSS and you can subscribe to the RSS feed.

An RSS feed is the name for the flow of all of the articles or posts from the site you subscribe to. You could equally call it an RSS flow, an RSS river, an RSS list, but someone on the Internet decided a long time ago that it was to be called an RSS feed.

You can subscribe to as many RSS feeds as you like with an RSS feed reader so, if you like to read a lot online, RSS is definitely something you should learn how to use. It will take you about five minutes to get set up.

Then you can forget about remembering to go back and visit your favourite blogs and news sites to check up on the latest posts or articles because RSS technology will automatically push the new articles into your feedreader’s inbox and folders (you can organise related feeds in different folders, like ‘law feeds’ or ‘business feeds’).

Think of it as like an interactive, customised newspaper.

Get Started with RSS in Five Minutes

It’s really easy to get started. You just need to:

1. Get a free RSS feed reader;
2. Sign up to your favourite feeds;
3. Start reading.

1. Get a Free RSS Feed Reader

There are a few. Online, Google Reader is good. If you have a Mac, like me, you might like to try NetNewsWire. If you’re on Windows, look at FeedDemon.

If you choose the Google Reader option, just sign in with your Google account, or sign up for a Google account if you don’t have one. If you choose one of the desktop programmes, download it, install it and fire it up.

2. Sign Up to Your Favourite Feeds

This is really easy. Almost every webpage you visit nowadays has the famous orange RSS symbol somewhere on it, or a redesigned variation. It’s not always orange and it’s not always square, but it’s nearly always there somewhere.

Some big news sites like the BBC which publish hundreds of new articles every week have a link to their RSS feed index where you can choose which of their RSS feeds you want to subscribe to (all of them if you want!).

Each feed reader has a slightly different way for you to add a new feed but it’s really easy in all of them. Look for a menu option that says something like ‘add feed’ or ‘add new feed’ or ’subscribe to new feed’.

3. Start Reading

You’re done! Start reading. Most feed readers allow you to keep track of your favourite articles by adding a star or a pin, allow you to add notes to them and allow you to share them with your friends.

In your RSS reader, the articles will not look the same as if you visited the blog. This is what one of my blog posts looks like in NetNewsWire, for example:

You can sign up to my blog’s RSS feed here: Matthew’s RSS feed.