RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a
web feed
On the World Wide Web, a web feed (or news feed) is a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content. Content distributors ''syndicate'' a web feed, thereby allowing users to ''subscribe'' a channel to it by adding the feed ...
that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a
standardized
Standardization or standardisation is the process of implementing and developing technical standards based on the consensus of different parties that include firms, users, interest groups, standards organizations and governments. Standardization ...
, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many different websites in a single
news aggregator
In computing, a news aggregator, also termed a feed aggregator, feed reader, news reader, RSS reader or simply an aggregator, is client software or a web application that aggregates syndicated web content such as online newspapers, blogs, podc ...
, which constantly monitor sites for new content, removing the need for the user to manually check them. News aggregators (or "RSS readers") can be built into a browser, installed on a
desktop computer
A desktop computer (often abbreviated desktop) is a personal computer designed for regular use at a single location on or near a desk due to its size and power requirements. The most common configuration has a case that houses the power supply ...
, or installed on a
mobile device
A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer small enough to hold and operate in the hand. Mobile devices typically have a flat LCD or OLED screen, a touchscreen interface, and digital or physical buttons. They may also have a physical ...
.
Websites usually use RSS feeds to publish frequently updated information, such as
blog
A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
entries, news headlines, episodes of audio and video series, or for distributing podcasts. An RSS document (called "feed", "web feed","Web feeds , RSS , The Guardian , guardian.co.uk",
''The Guardian'', London, 2008, webpage:
GuardianUK-webfeeds . or "channel") includes full or summarized text, and
metadata
Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including:
* Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...
, like publishing date and author's name. RSS formats are specified using a generic
XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...
file.
Although RSS formats have evolved from as early as March 1999, it was between 2005 and 2006 when RSS gained widespread use, and the ("") icon was decided upon by several major web browsers. RSS feed data is presented to users using software called a news aggregator and the passing of content is called
web syndication
Web syndication is a form of syndication in which content is made available from one website to other sites. Most commonly, websites are made available to provide either summaries or full renditions of a website's recently added content. The term ...
. Users subscribe to feeds either by entering a feed's
URI Uri may refer to:
Places
* Canton of Uri, a canton in Switzerland
* Úri, a village and commune in Hungary
* Uri, Iran, a village in East Azerbaijan Province
* Uri, Jammu and Kashmir, a town in India
* Uri (island), an island off Malakula Islan ...
into the reader or by clicking on the browser's
feed icon
On the World Wide Web, a web feed (or news feed) is a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content. Content distributors ''Web syndication, syndicate'' a web feed, thereby allowing users to ''subscribe'' a channel to it b ...
. The RSS reader checks the user's feeds regularly for new information and can automatically download it, if that function is enabled.
History
The RSS formats were preceded by several attempts at
web syndication
Web syndication is a form of syndication in which content is made available from one website to other sites. Most commonly, websites are made available to provide either summaries or full renditions of a website's recently added content. The term ...
that did not achieve widespread popularity. The basic idea of restructuring information about websites goes back to as early as 1995, when Ramanathan V. Guha and others in
Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...
Meta Content Framework Meta Content Framework (MCF) is a specification of a content format for structuring metadata about web sites and other data.
History
MCF was developed by Ramanathan V. Guha at Apple Computer's Advanced Technology Group between 1995 and 1997. Roo ...
.
RDF Site Summary, the first version of RSS, was created by
Dan Libby
Dan or DAN may refer to:
People
* Dan (name), including a list of people with the name
** Dan (king), several kings of Denmark
* Dan people, an ethnic group located in West Africa
**Dan language, a Mande language spoken primarily in Côte d'Ivoi ...
and Ramanathan V. Guha at
Netscape
Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was onc ...
. It was released in March 1999 for use on the My.Netscape.Com portal. This version became known as RSS 0.9. In July 1999, Dan Libby of Netscape produced a new version, RSS 0.91,
which simplified the format by removing RDF elements and incorporating elements from
Dave Winer
Dave Winer (born May 2, 1955, in Queens, New York City) is an American software developer, entrepreneur, and writer who resides in New York City. Winer is noted for his contributions to outliners, scripting, content management, and web servi ...
's news syndication format.
Libby also renamed the format from RDF to RSS Rich Site Summary and outlined further development of the format in a "futures document".
This would be Netscape's last participation in RSS development for eight years. As RSS was being embraced by web publishers who wanted their feeds to be used on My.Netscape.Com and other early RSS portals, Netscape dropped RSS support from My.Netscape.Com in April 2001 during new owner
AOL
AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo (2017â ...
's restructuring of the company, also removing documentation and tools that supported the format.
Two parties emerged to fill the void, with neither Netscape's help nor approval: The
RSS-DEV Working Group The RSS-DEV Working Group was the outgrowth of a fork in RSS format development. The private, non-commercial working group began with a dozen members in three countries, and was chaired by Rael Dornfest, researcher and developer of the Meerkat RSS ...
and Dave Winer, whose
UserLand Software
UserLand Software is a US-based software company, founded in 1988, that sells web content management, as well as blogging software packages and services.
Company history
Dave Winer founded the company in 1988 after leaving Symantec in the spri ...
had published some of the first publishing tools outside Netscape that could read and write RSS.
Winer published a modified version of the RSS 0.91 specification on the UserLand website, covering how it was being used in his company's products, and claimed copyright to the document. A few months later, UserLand filed a U.S. trademark registration for RSS, but failed to respond to a
USPTO
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Alexa ...
trademark examiner's request and the request was rejected in December 2001.
The RSS-DEV Working Group, a project whose members included
Aaron Swartz
Aaron Hillel Swartz (November 8, 1986 – January 11, 2013) was an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, writer, political organizer, and Internet hacktivist. A prolific programmer, Swartz helped develop the web feed format RSS, the tech ...
, Guha and representatives of
O'Reilly Media
O'Reilly Media (formerly O'Reilly & Associates) is an American learning company established by Tim O'Reilly that publishes books, produces tech conferences, and provides an online learning platform. Its distinctive brand features a woodcut of an ...
and Moreover, produced RSS 1.0 in December 2000. This new version, which reclaimed the name RDF Site Summary from RSS 0.9, reintroduced support for RDF and added
XML namespace
XML namespaces are used for providing uniquely named elements and attributes in an XML document. They are defined in a W3C recommendation. An XML instance may contain element or attribute names from more than one XML vocabulary. If each vocabular ...
s support, adopting elements from standard metadata vocabularies such as
Dublin Core
220px, Logo image of DCMI, which formulates Dublin Core
The Dublin Core, also known as the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (DCMES), is a set of fifteen "core" elements (properties) for describing resources. This fifteen-element Dublin Core has ...
.
In December 2000, Winer released RSS 0.92
a minor set of changes aside from the introduction of the enclosure element, which permitted audio files to be carried in RSS feeds and helped spark
podcast
A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing ...
ing. He also released drafts of RSS 0.93 and RSS 0.94 that were subsequently withdrawn.
In September 2002, Winer released a major new version of the format, RSS 2.0, that redubbed its initials Really Simple Syndication. RSS 2.0 removed the ''type'' attribute added in the RSS 0.94 draft and added support for namespaces. To preserve backward compatibility with RSS 0.92, namespace support applies only to other content included within an RSS 2.0 feed, not the RSS 2.0 elements themselves. (Although other standards such as
Atom
Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and a number of neutrons. Only the most common variety of hydrogen has no neutrons.
Every solid, liquid, gas, and ...
attempt to correct this limitation, RSS feeds are not aggregated with other content often enough to shift the popularity from RSS to other formats having full namespace support.)
Because neither Winer nor the RSS-DEV Working Group had Netscape's involvement, they could not make an official claim on the RSS name or format. This has fueled ongoing controversy in the syndication development community as to which entity was the proper publisher of RSS.
One product of that contentious debate was the creation of an alternative syndication format, Atom, that began in June 2003. The Atom syndication format, whose creation was in part motivated by a desire to get a clean start free of the issues surrounding RSS, has been adopted as
IETF
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements and a ...
Proposed Standard .
In July 2003, Winer and UserLand Software assigned the copyright of the RSS 2.0 specification to Harvard's
Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society
The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society is a research center at Harvard University that focuses on the study of cyberspace. Founded at Harvard Law School, the center traditionally focused on internet-related legal issues. On May 15, 2008, ...
, where he had just begun a term as a visiting fellow. At the same time, Winer launched the
RSS Advisory Board The RSS Advisory Board is a group founded in July 2003 that publishes the RSS 0.9, RSS 0.91 and RSS 2.0 specifications and helps developers create RSS applications.
Dave Winer, the lead author of several RSS specifications and a longtime evangelis ...
with
Brent Simmons
NetNewsWire is a free and open-source news aggregator for macOS and iOS. It was introduced by Brent and Sheila Simmons on July 12, 2002, under their company Ranchero Software.
History
NetNewsWire was developed by Brent and Sheila Simmons for th ...
and
Jon Udell
Jon Udell is a freelance journalist. From 2007 to 2014 he was "Evangelist" at Microsoft. Previously he was lead analyst for the InfoWorld Test Center.
Udell is author of ''Practical Internet Groupware'', published in 1999 by O'Reilly Media, and ...
, a group whose purpose was to maintain and publish the specification and answer questions about the format.
In September 2004, Stephen Horlander created the now ubiquitous RSS icon () for use in the
Mozilla
Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, wi ...
Firefox
Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and ...
browser.
In December 2005, the Microsoft Internet Explorer team and
Microsoft Outlook
Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager software system from Microsoft, available as a part of the Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 software suites. Though primarily an email client, Outlook also includes such functions as Calen ...
team announced on their blogs that they were adopting Firefox's RSS icon. In February 2006,
Opera Software
Opera is a Norwegian multinational technology company and subsidiary of Kunlun that specializes in web browser development, fintech, as well as services such as Opera News and YoYo Games. The company's total user base, including users of its ...
followed suit. This effectively made the orange square with white radio waves the industry standard for RSS and Atom feeds, replacing the large variety of icons and text that had been used previously to identify syndication data.
In January 2006,
Rogers Cadenhead
Rogers Cadenhead (born April 13, 1967) is a computer book author and web publisher who served from 2006 to 2008 as chairman of the RSS Advisory Board, a group that publishes the RSS 2.0 specification. He graduated from Lloyd V. Berkner High Schoo ...
relaunched the RSS Advisory Board without Dave Winer's participation, with a stated desire to continue the development of the RSS format and resolve ambiguities. In June 2007, the board revised their version of the specification to confirm that namespaces may extend core elements with namespace attributes, as Microsoft has done in Internet Explorer 7. According to their view, a difference of interpretation left publishers unsure of whether this was permitted or forbidden.
Example
RSS is
XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...
-formatted plain text. The RSS format itself is relatively easy to read both by automated processes and by humans alike. An example feed could have contents such as the following:
RSS TitleThis is an example of an RSS feed
http://www.example.com/main.html
2020 Example.com All rights reservedMon, 6 September 2010 00:01:00 +0000Sun, 6 September 2009 16:20:00 +00001800Example entryHere is some text containing an interesting description.
http://www.example.com/blog/post/1
7bd204c6-1655-4c27-aeee-53f933c5395fSun, 6 September 2009 16:20:00 +0000
Aggregators
When retrieved, RSS reading software could use the XML structure to present a neat display to the end users. There are various news aggregator software for desktop and mobile devices, but RSS can also be built-in inside
web browser
A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...
s or
email client
An email client, email reader or, more formally, message user agent (MUA) or mail user agent is a computer program used to access and manage a user's email.
A web application which provides message management, composition, and reception functio ...
s like
Mozilla Thunderbird
Mozilla Thunderbird is a free and open-source cross-platform email client, personal information manager, news client, RSS and chat client developed by the Mozilla Foundation and operated by subsidiary MZLA Technologies Corporation. The project s ...
.
Variants
There are several different versions of RSS, falling into two major branches (RDF and 2.*).
The RDF (or RSS 1.*) branch includes the following versions:
*RSS 0.90 was the original Netscape RSS version. This RSS was called ''RDF Site Summary'', but was based on an early working draft of the RDF standard, and was not compatible with the final RDF Recommendation.
*RSS 1.0 is an open format by the RSS-DEV Working Group, again standing for ''RDF Site Summary''. RSS 1.0 is an RDF format like RSS 0.90, but not fully compatible with it, since 1.0 is based on the final RDF 1.0 Recommendation.
*RSS 1.1 is also an open format and is intended to update and replace RSS 1.0. The specification is an independent draft not supported or endorsed in any way by the RSS-Dev Working Group or any other organization.
The RSS 2.* branch (initially UserLand, now Harvard) includes the following versions:
*RSS 0.91 is the simplified RSS version released by Netscape, and also the version number of the simplified version originally championed by Dave Winer from Userland Software. The Netscape version was now called ''Rich Site Summary''; this was no longer an RDF format, but was relatively easy to use.
*RSS 0.92 through 0.94 are expansions of the RSS 0.91 format, which are mostly compatible with each other and with Winer's version of RSS 0.91, but are not compatible with RSS 0.90.
*RSS 2.0.1 has the internal version number 2.0. RSS 2.0.1 was proclaimed to be "frozen", but still updated shortly after release without changing the version number. RSS now stood for ''Really Simple Syndication''. The major change in this version is an explicit extension mechanism using XML namespaces.
Later versions in each branch are
backward-compatible
Backward compatibility (sometimes known as backwards compatibility) is a property of an operating system, product, or technology that allows for interoperability with an older legacy system, or with input designed for such a system, especially in ...
with earlier versions (aside from non-conformant RDF syntax in 0.90), and both versions include properly documented extension mechanisms using XML Namespaces, either directly (in the 2.* branch) or through RDF (in the 1.* branch). Most syndication software supports both branches. "The Myth of RSS Compatibility", an article written in 2004 by RSS critic and
Atom
Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and a number of neutrons. Only the most common variety of hydrogen has no neutrons.
Every solid, liquid, gas, and ...
advocate
Mark Pilgrim
Mark Pilgrim is a software developer, writer, and advocate of free software. He authored a popular blog, and has written several books, including ''Dive into Python'', a guide to the Python programming language published under the GNU Free Docu ...
, discusses RSS version compatibility issues in more detail.
The extension mechanisms make it possible for each branch to copy innovations in the other. For example, the RSS 2.* branch was the first to support
enclosures
Enclosure or Inclosure is a term, used in English landownership, that refers to the appropriation of "waste" or "common land" enclosing it and by doing so depriving commoners of their rights of access and privilege. Agreements to enclose land ...
, making it the current leading choice for podcasting, and is the format supported for that use by
iTunes
iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital mul ...
and other podcasting software; however, an enclosure extension is now available for the RSS 1.* branch, mod_enclosure. Likewise, the RSS 2.* core specification does not support providing full-text in addition to a synopsis, but the RSS 1.* markup can be (and often is) used as an extension. There are also several common outside extension packages available, e.g. one from
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
for use in
Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Microsoft Wind ...
7.
The most serious compatibility problem is with HTML markup. Userland's RSS reader—generally considered as the reference implementation—did not originally filter out
HTML
The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...
markup from feeds. As a result, publishers began placing HTML markup into the titles and descriptions of items in their RSS feeds. This behavior has become expected of readers, to the point of becoming a
de facto
''De facto'' ( ; , "in fact") describes practices that exist in reality, whether or not they are officially recognized by laws or other formal norms. It is commonly used to refer to what happens in practice, in contrast with ''de jure'' ("by la ...
standard. Though there is still some inconsistency in how software handles this markup, particularly in titles. The RSS 2.0 specification was later updated to include examples of entity-encoded HTML; however, all prior plain text usages remain valid.
, tracking data from www.syndic8.com indicates that the three main versions of RSS in current use are 0.91, 1.0, and 2.0, constituting 13%, 17%, and 67% of worldwide RSS usage, respectively. These figures, however, do not include usage of the rival web feed format Atom. , the syndic8.com website is indexing 546,069 total feeds, of which 86,496 (16%) were some dialect of Atom and 438,102 were some dialect of RSS.
Modules
The primary objective of all RSS modules is to extend the basic XML schema established for more robust syndication of content. This inherently allows for more diverse, yet standardized, transactions without modifying the core RSS specification.
To accomplish this extension, a tightly controlled vocabulary (in the RSS world, "module"; in the XML world, "schema") is declared through an XML namespace to give names to concepts and relationships between those concepts.
Some RSS 2.0 modules with established namespaces are:
*
Media RSS
Media RSS (MRSS) is an RSS extension that adds several enhancements to RSS enclosures, and is used for syndicating multimedia files (audio, video, image) in RSS feeds. It was originally designed by Yahoo! and the Media RSS community in 2004, but ...
Although the number of items in an RSS channel is theoretically unlimited, some
news aggregators
In computing, a news aggregator, also termed a feed aggregator, feed reader, news reader, RSS reader or simply an aggregator, is client software or a web application that aggregates syndicated web content such as online newspapers, blogs, podc ...
do not support RSS files larger than 150KB. For example, applications that rely on the Common Feed List of
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
might handle such files as if they were corrupt, and not open them.
Interoperability
Interoperability is a characteristic of a product or system to work with other products or systems. While the term was initially defined for information technology or systems engineering services to allow for information exchange, a broader defi ...
can be maximized by keeping the file size under this limit.
Podcasts are distributed using RSS. To listen to a podcast, a user adds the RSS feed to their podcast client, and the client can then list available episodes and download or stream them for listening or viewing. To be included in a podcast directory the feed must for each episode provide a title, description, artwork, category, language, and explicit rating. There are some services that specifically indexes and is a
search engine
A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...
for podcasts.
Some BitTorrent clients support RSS. RSS feeds which provide links to .torrent files allow users to subscribe and automatically download content as soon as it is published.
RSS to email
Some services deliver RSS to an email inbox, sending updates from user's personal selection and schedules. Examples of such services include
IFTTT
IFTTT (, an acronym of If This Then That) is a private commercial company that runs online digital automation platforms which it offers as a service. Their platforms provide a visual interface for making cross-platform if statements to its us ...
,
Zapier
Zapier is a product that allows end users to integrate the web applications they use and automate workflows. The company is fully remote. As of 2021, it connects to more than 4,000 apps, with free and paid plans.
Overview
Zapier provides workflo ...
and others. Conversely, some services deliver email to RSS readers. Further services like e. g.
Gmane
Gmane (pronounced "mane") is an e-mail to news gateway. It allows users to access electronic mailing lists as if they were Usenet newsgroups, and also through a variety of web interfaces. Since Gmane is a bidirectional gateway, it can also be ...
allow to subscribe to feeds via
NNTP
The Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) is an application protocol used for transporting Usenet news articles (''netnews'') between news servers, and for reading/posting articles by the end user client applications. Brian Kantor of the Univers ...
.
It may be noted that
email clients
An email client, email reader or, more formally, message user agent (MUA) or mail user agent is a computer program used to access and manage a user's email.
A web application which provides message management, composition, and reception functio ...
such as
Thunderbird
Thunderbird, thunder bird or thunderbirds may refer to:
* Thunderbird (mythology), a legendary creature in certain North American indigenous peoples' history and culture
* Ford Thunderbird, a car
Birds
* Dromornithidae, extinct flightless birds ...
supports RSS natively.
RSS compared with Atom
Both RSS and
Atom
Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and a number of neutrons. Only the most common variety of hydrogen has no neutrons.
Every solid, liquid, gas, and ...
are widely supported and are compatible with all major consumer feed readers. RSS gained wider use because of early feed reader support. Technically, Atom has several advantages: less restrictive licensing, IANA-registered
MIME type
A media type (also known as a MIME type) is a two-part identifier for file formats and format contents transmitted on the Internet. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is the official authority for t ...
, XML namespace,
URI Uri may refer to:
Places
* Canton of Uri, a canton in Switzerland
* Úri, a village and commune in Hungary
* Uri, Iran, a village in East Azerbaijan Province
* Uri, Jammu and Kashmir, a town in India
* Uri (island), an island off Malakula Islan ...
support,
RELAX NG
In computing, RELAX NG (REgular LAnguage for XML Next Generation) is a schema language for XML—a RELAX NG schema specifies a pattern for the structure and content of an XML document. A RELAX NG schema is itself an XML document but RELAX NG also ...
support.
The following table shows RSS elements alongside Atom elements where they are equivalent.
Note: the
asterisk
The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star.
Computer scientists and mathematicians often voc ...
character (*) indicates that an element must be provided (Atom elements "author" and "link" are only required under certain conditions).
Current usage
Several major sites such as
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
and
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
previously offered RSS feeds but have reduced or removed support. Additionally, widely used readers such as
FeedDemon
FeedDemon is a free RSS feed reader for Windows. It was created in 2003 and is developed by Nick Bradbury, author of tools HomeSite, an HTML editor, and TopStyle, a CSS editor. FeedDemon is developed in Delphi. FeedDemon was purchased by NewsGa ...
, and particularly
Google Reader
Google Reader was an RSS/Atom feed aggregator operated by Google. It was created in early 2005 by Google engineer Chris Wetherell and launched on October 7, 2005, through Google Labs. Google Reader grew in popularity to support a number of prog ...
have been discontinued as of 2013 having cited declining popularity in RSS. RSS support was removed in
OS X Mountain Lion
OS X Mountain Lion (version 10.8) is the ninth major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. OS X Mountain Lion was released on July 25, 2012, for purchase and download through Apple's Mac Ap ...
's versions of
Mail
The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letter (message), letters, and parcel (package), parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid ...
and Safari, although the features were partially restored in Safari 8. Mozilla removed RSS support from
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and a ...
version 64.0, joining
Google Chrome
Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS ...
and
Microsoft Edge
Microsoft Edge is a proprietary, cross-platform web browser created by Microsoft. It was first released in 2015 as part of Windows 10 and Xbox One and later ported to other platforms as a fork of Google's Chromium open-source project: Android ...
which do not include RSS support, thus leaving
Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Microsoft Wind ...
as the last major browser to include RSS support by default. Google Podcasts has proven to be a popular podcast service using RSS.
Since the late 2010s there has been an uptick in RSS interest again. In 2018, ''
'' published an article named "It's Time for an RSS Revival", citing that RSS gives more control over content compared to algorithms and trackers from social media sites. At that time,
Feedly
Feedly is a news aggregator application for various web browsers and mobile devices running iOS and Android. It is also available as a cloud-based service. It compiles news feeds from a variety of online sources for the user to customize and sha ...
was the most popular RSS reader. Chrome on Android has added the ability to follow RSS feeds in 2021.
See also
*
JSON Feed
JSON Feed is a Web feed file format for Web syndication in JSON instead of XML as used by RSS and Atom (Web standard), Atom.
A range of software libraries and web frameworks support content syndication via JSON Feed. Supporting clients include Ne ...
*
Aaron Swartz
Aaron Hillel Swartz (November 8, 1986 – January 11, 2013) was an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, writer, political organizer, and Internet hacktivist. A prolific programmer, Swartz helped develop the web feed format RSS, the tech ...
*
Comparison of feed aggregators
The following is a comparison of RSS feed aggregators. Often e-mail programs and web browsers have the ability to display RSS feeds. They are listed here, too.
Many BitTorrent clients support RSS feeds for broadcasting (see Comparison of BitT ...
*
Data portability Data portability is a concept to protect users from having their data stored in "silos" or "walled gardens" that are incompatible with one another, i.e. closed platforms, thus subjecting them to vendor lock-in and making the creation of data backups ...
*
FeedSync
FeedSync for Atom and RSS, previously Simple Sharing Extensions, are extensions to RSS and Atom feed formats designed to enable the synchronization of information by using a variety of data sources. Initially developed by Ray Ozzie, Chief Softwar ...
previously Simple Sharing Extensions
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hAtom
hAtom is a draft Microformat for marking up (X)HTML, using classes and ''rel'' attributes, content on web pages that contain blog entries or similar chronological content. These can then be parsed as feeds in Atom, a web syndication standard.
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Mashup (web application hybrid)
A mashup (computer industry jargon), in web development, is a web page or web application that uses content from more than one source to create a single new service displayed in a single graphical interface. For example, a user could combine the ...
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WebSub
WebSub (formerly PubSubHubbub) is an open protocol for distributed publish–subscribe communication on the Internet. Initially designed to extend the Atom (and RSS) protocols for data feeds, the protocol can be applied to any data type (e.g. HTM ...