RSS, Real Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary, is an XML-based format (using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) that provides an open method of syndicating and aggregating Web content. Using RSS files, you can create a data feed that supplies headlines, links, and article summaries from your website to others. Users can have constantly updated content from websites delivered to them via a news reader (aggregator), a piece of software specifically tailored to receive these types of feeds.

RSS makes it easy to take another site’s content and feed it to yours. As an example, let’s say I took Yahoo!’s Sports RSS feed and added it to my site. Every time they posted a new sports article or story it would be updated on my site as well, a concept that was a revolutionary breakthrough for the Internet. Now websites can grow their content without having to write all the data on their own. In my opinion, this idea will continue to drive the Internet and will thrive for many years to come.

To view Yahoo! News RSS, click here, you’ll see what I’m talking about.

The big consumer benefit to RSS is that consumers opt-in to obtain content of interest, totally controlling the flow of information they receive. The RSS reader acts as an aggregator, allowing users to view and scan multiple content streams in a timely fashion.

So let’s reverse this whole idea now. Let’s say you have a website or blog. Do you provide RSS feeds for the content on your site? Can your users simply take the content that is on your site and feed it to theirs? In a few years, most websites and blogs will have RSS integrated with their website. RSS will become a standard, just as email has become a standard in our lives today. It will be a regular service that is packaged with the development of every website.