What is an RSS feed?

[naitsirhc26]

I am new to RSS. What is it? Can you explain what a feed is?

[choster]

RSS is a type, or more accurately any of several types of XML used to syndicate web content. In practical terms, it is a text file or stream which contains titles, descriptions, and other metadata about the contents of a website or part of a website. Two other types of XML for syndication are RDF and Atom.

A "feed" is any continuous source of output: a news wire, stock ticker, and webcams are kinds of feeds. An RSS feed or RSS channel is simply a URL you can call to get the latest RSS of that site or topic.

For an example of what it looks like, see [news.google.com...] . Although RSS can be formatted for viewing in a web browser (for instance see [newsrss.bbc.co.uk...] ), usually it is either viewed in an RSS reader or converted into HTML and delivered as a web page.