The abbreviation RSS stands for several versions of a similar thing including Really Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91), RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0), and Real-time Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0). It’s a simple data-only version of a Web log, page, or site and is used to have web-sites you choose distribute their most recent updates directly to your screen or device. Instead of having to visit different sites to get news or information, you can visit one place and see the pooled information as a feed. This can easily be used to quickly track updates for news, blogs, sports scores, or even fellow student’s blogs because the RSS headlines and stories are delivered relatively fast. Once the feed has been distributed from the source server a RSS headline will take just seconds to update on your screen, so by subscribing to the RSS feed on their pages you will be notified when they add content. In order to view this content on your computer you need a program called an aggregator. Many of these feed readers are free to use and can be found online. While searching the Internet I came across an article titled, “Top 8 Free Windows RSS Feed Readers / News Aggregators” that interested readers may find useful.
Though it was very popular in the 1990’s and had little competition that has changed. A limitation of RSS is its clunky nature. In order to download a feed the entire feed most be downloaded each time. Key sites such as Twitter and Facebook have removed and/or reduced support for RSS. Furthermore, widely used readers such as Shiira and Google Reader have been discontinued having cited declining popularity in RSS. This may be partly due to the success of the aforementioned social media sites as many people frequent them for their updates and feeds. On the site side, ad revenue is not as good as it once was due to RSS scraping which is a form of content theft that occurs when someone publishes a feed from the original site to gain user traffic. This loss in traffic reduces ad clicks thus reducing ad funds.