Newhouse School of Communications

What is RSS?

Depending on who you talk to, RSS stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. Either way, RSS allows you to identify the content you like and have it delivered directly to you.

Below are a number of facts that will help you better understand RSS.

  • Typically RSS is used to gather, read, or quickly scan frequently updated headlines from a variety of sources using a "News Aggregator" or "RSS reader" program.
  • Probably the easiest way to start enjoying RSS feeds is to sign up for a news reader. There are many different versions, some of which are accessed using a browser, and some of which are downloadable applications. All allow you to display and subscribe to the RSS feeds you want.
  • There are a number of free and fee based news readers below are some examples:
  • Windows Mac OSX Online readers
    Awasu NetNewsWire Bloglines
    FeedDemon Newsfire Google Reader
    NewzCrawler NewsGator My Yahoo!

  • If you prefer - RSS alerts can be e mailed to you.
  • With RSS, you control which feeds you receive at all times. At any time, you choose to add feeds that you are interested in and remove those that you are no longer interested in. Your RSS feed reader will have instructions on how to easily remove a feed from your reader, which is the RSS equivalent of unsubscribing from an e-mail program.