Beginner's Guide to RSS and Atom Feeds

What are RSS and Atom feeds? If you're reading this, then it's pretty likely you've already seen links to feeds (things such as "Syndicate this Site" or the ubiquitous orange-and-white "RSS" buttons) starting to pop up on all of your favorite sites. Most likely you are a beginner, who will screatch your heads at this thought. In fact, you might already have secured a feed reader or aggregator and stopped visiting most of your favorite sites in person. The bookmarks in your browser have started gathering dust since you stopped clicking through them every day. And, if you're like some feed addicts, you're keeping track of what's new from more Web sites and news sources than you ever have before, or even thought possible.

If you're a voracious infovore like me and this story doesn't sound familiar, then you're in for a treat. RSS and Atom feeds-collectively known as syndication feeds-are behind one of the biggest changes to sweep across the Web since the invention of the personal home page. These syndication feeds make it easy for machines to surf the Web, so you don't have to.

So far, syndication feed readers won't actually read or intelligently digest content on the Web for you, but they will let you know when there's something new to peruse and can collect it in an inbox, like email. In fact, these feeds and their readers layer the Web with features not altogether different than email newsletters and Usenet newsgroups, but with much more control over what you receive and none of the spam. With the time you used to spend browsing through bookmarked sites checking for updates, you can now just get straight to reading new stuff presented directly. It's almost like someone is publishing a newspaper tailored just for you.