Glossary Terms

RSS Feed

An RSS feed is a standardized file, written in XML, that lists a site's latest content (titles, dates, summaries, and links) so other software can read it automatically. Instead of checking dozens of sites by hand, you subscribe in an RSS reader and it pulls in everything new in one clean, ad-free place. The same feeds quietly power a lot of the web: podcast directories like Apple Podcasts run on them, and they feed newsletters and "latest posts" widgets. People wrote RSS off after Google Reader shut down, but it's had a real revival among readers who want a calm, chronological stream they control rather than an algorithm deciding what they see.