What is an RSS feed?
RSS, most often expanded as Really Simple Syndication, is a format written in XML for publishing a list of updates. Each item has a title, a link, a date, a summary and sometimes the full content or a media file. The site publishes the feed at a stable address, and feed readers, podcast apps, news aggregators and other sites check it regularly for anything new. Atom is a close relative that does the same job, and most software reads both.
The format dates from 1999. It had a moment of fame in the mid-2000s, when feed readers were how many people read the web, and that moment ended when Google Reader closed in 2013. RSS itself never went away. Every podcast is distributed through an RSS feed, most news sites and blogs publish one, and content management systems such as WordPress generate feeds automatically.
Why it matters
Why an RSS feed matters
A feed is a direct line from a publisher to its readers that no algorithm controls. Someone who subscribes sees everything that is published, in order, without a platform deciding what is shown. For a brand that publishes regularly, that is a loyal audience on its own terms. Feeds also do quiet work in the background: they syndicate articles to partners, populate newsletters automatically, pull content into apps and dashboards, and help search engines and other services discover new pages quickly. For podcasts they are not optional at all; as far as every listening app is concerned, the feed is the show.
In practice
How an RSS feed works in practice
- 01
On most sites the feed already exists. WordPress, for example, publishes one for the whole site and separate ones for each category, tag and author, without anyone switching them on. The work is configuring them: whether items carry the full text or an excerpt, whether images are included, how many items appear, and making sure the feed is linked in the page's head so feed readers and browsers can find it.
- 02
For podcasts and syndication, the feed carries more. Podcast feeds add the show's artwork, categories, episode files and the extra tags that Apple Podcasts and Spotify read, and they are checked with a validator before every launch. Feeds sent to partners are tested in the partner's system, because a small error in the XML can silently stop a feed from updating, and nobody notices until a week of content has gone missing.
Watch out
What people get wrong about RSS feeds
Calling RSS dead. It runs underneath most podcasts, a great deal of news distribution and countless automations, and the people who still read with it are some of the most loyal readers a publisher has. Second, publishing excerpts only in the hope of forcing clicks, which mostly forces unsubscribes. Third, forgetting the feed exists, so a post published by mistake and deleted ten minutes later is already sitting in subscribers' readers, where deleting it from the site does not reach. And leaving it unbranded: a feed with no proper title, description or image looks abandoned in every reader that displays it.
