The beauty of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is that it is a “pull” technology. That is, subscribers to a webfeed actively subscribe to content, and can unsubscribe at any time. This has a huge benefit over receiving information via email since email is a “push” technology. Information comes to you, sometimes, whether you want it or not.

RSS is very versatile, and there are numerous information-sharing uses for it. Many of those uses are covered at RSS Case Studies. Other uses will be highlighted here as actual services, many for free.

The term “webfeed” is a generic term for an URL that points to a sequence of syndicated content items. Webfeeds usually come in one of three flavours: RSS, Atom, and RDF. RDF , in fact, is actually a version of RSS that was abandoned in terms of development, but is used by some web publishers for legacy reasons. Atom is a newer format that only has functionality in common with RSS. All three formats use XML (eXtensible Markup Language) to describe fields of information.

If you are new to webfeeds, please read my What Are Web Feeds series of articles.