Originally developed by Netscape in 1999, RSS
(which can stand for RDF Site Summary, Rich Site Summary, or Really Simple
Syndication) is an XML-based format that allows web developers to describe
and syndicate web site content to portal sites and RSS search engines. The use of RSS files allows us to create a
data feed(s) that supply headlines, links, news and article summaries from a
web site. Other sites can then incorporate them into their pages
automatically. Websites that publish new content regularly
usually provide a list of news headline style links to their latest content.
In addition to displaying these headlines on their own websites, it is very
common for publishers to make them available for syndication, so that other
websites or applications can also include their headlines.
Headline syndication does not usually deal with the full text of articles,
it is simply about syndicating an automatically updating list of headlines,
with each headline being a link to the item that it refers to on the
publishers website. Using RSS Channels and Syndicating headlines
is an excellent and cost-effective way of driving traffic to, and increasing
brand awareness of, any website that publishes new content regularly.
Once a website produces an RSS Channel, they enable others to syndicate
their headlines, without any further work on their part.
The main benefits of creating an RSS file:
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RSS content can
be included in customizable online news portals that aggregate
RSS headlines like Internet.com, About.com, InfoWorld and many others..
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Websites that
display news headlines can use an RSS file to incorporate
another websites headlines into their own. |
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RSS content can
be added to personal desktop news reading applications like
Headline Viewer,
NewsGator,
IE RSS Aggregator,
FeedReader and many others. |
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Email newsletter
providers could allow users to subscribe to RSS channels.
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The ability of
submitting your Headlines to a whole new breed of RSS Search
Engines |
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The RSS format is
ideally suited to users of personal digital assistants (PDA's)
and cellular devices. |
One positive side effect of producing an RSS
file is that it can also be used by headline aggregation services like
Moreover.com,
who power 1000's of news portal sites, specialist news search engines,
business intelligence services or provide news feeds to websites. Most such
companies use crawler-based technologies to aggregate and do not insist upon
content being available in RSS, however they do have some requirements which
having an RSS file addresses, sparing the need for any work on the part of a
website that already publishes its headlines in RSS.
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