RSS stands for Rich Site Summary. I am sure you have seen these three letters (RSS), on websites, blogs, news and services. It's a way of getting information across to others where they can choose what content to view by skimming the content in summary form and if it interests them they can click on the whole version. It makes life much simpler than having to read endless content until you have found what you are looking for. For instance, if you had a blog and you updated it regularly, your visitors could keep up with all the posts by using (RSS), Rich Site Summary from a single url that you generate from your blog. They would do this by using an aggregator, (feed reader). This enables them to see the title and update of the source which would also contain a link to the full source.
The benefits of using RSS feeds can be great for building a list of subscribers to your site. You don't have to use email to send updates to your visitors and they don't need to register for email updates which disposes of the risk of email spam. The lack of time is often a problem for a lot of people and being able to subscribe to RSS feeds can save a great deal of time rather than having to surf to find what they are looking for. You can unsubscribe at any time just be deleting the url from your aggregator.
The disadvantages of RSS feed would be that it doesn't show images or graphics. If you have subscribed to several feeds you may not know at once which feed is from which website. Some people still prefer emails with whole updates rather than just a summary. For the website owner you can't see how many people have subscribed to the feeds compared to email marketing where you have your list. How do you subscribe to feeds?
There are two types of aggregators, (feed readers). There are internet aggregators which are normally free of charge and perfect for the newbie and you would just register an account with the provider. The other type of aggregator is a downloadable program which may not be free of charge. It's called a desktop aggregator. This aggregator has more options and is normally chosen by the experienced user who would choose and customise which feeds they were interested in. To start receiving your feeds you would search the website, blog or service for the RSS or XML icon. This will contain the code that you need to input into the aggregator. Click the icon and the code will come up. Copy the code and input this into the aggregator and you are done. You have successfully subscribed to your chosen site's RSS feed.
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