The History of RSS Feeds

Graphic Citation

RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. It uses a family of standard web feed formats to publish frequently updated information: blog entries, news headlines, audio, video. An RSS document, called "feed", includes full or summarized text, and metadata, like publishing date and authors name. You can read more about it in RSS Feed Definition on Wikipedia and What is RSS?

The first RSS feed was published in March of 1999, and was used on Netscape. In 2002, a new RSS feed application was published removing the type attribute of RSS 0.94. This new software was called RSS 2.0 and after Google Reader shuts down, RSS feeds became extremely popular.

I have used RSS feed before to automatically update my blog with news without me having to update it on a daily basis. It is very simple: just add the feed to the HTML page and voila! I have updated new every day and the page appears fresh and new with the latest news without me having to lift a finger!