Discover “RSS Feeds”: What are they, why do we need them, and how do we use them?

Before the emergence of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Telegram, there was a service called RSS. It was a way to receive news and updates from multiple sources, conveniently compiled in one place. While social media has taken a significant share of the market from RSS, it remains a valuable tool for news anchors and market observers. In short, through this service, you can access a summary of continuously updated and self-curated information, saving a lot of time and effort. This feature leads to a job well done that you, dear reader, will appreciate. Let’s explore it further in the following lines.

What is “RSS”?

“RSS” stands for “Rich Site Summary” in Arabic, while in English it stands for “Really Simple Syndication” or “RDF Site Summary.” Regardless of the abbreviation, it is a very clear technology: whenever a website publishes new content, that content can be automatically directed by the “RSS” service. An “RSS” reader can benefit from this feed and display a list of posts resembling Twitter, a grid of images and headlines, or even full magazine-style articles. It is characterized by ease of operation and viewing, with dozens of web, mobile, and desktop applications that can aggregate hundreds of these sources in one place.

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How Can I Use “RSS”?

There are several different ways to use the RSS service. Here are the main ones:

• News: Simply connect a group of your favorite news websites and receive daily news headlines directly through the RSS feed. You can customize it as they offer all kinds of useful tools for filtering and sorting content.
• Specialized Interests: If you are particularly interested in a specific topic, you can connect to various blogs and specialized websites and receive a full RSS summary of the content from your favorite sites.
• Stay Up-to-Date on Prices and Deals: There are many websites that monitor deals with RSS feeds, and you can even receive updates on flight prices, categories, stocks, currency activity, and more.
• Job Hunting: Some job search websites have a feature that allows you to receive constant updates whenever a new job that matches your search criteria appears.
• Weather Updates and other great services: You can get beautiful creativity with the things you put in the RSS summary – shipping updates, flight delays, music recommendations, and more.

Top Sites to Help You Manage Your “RSS” Feeds

1. InoReader

InoReader has a great layout, unlimited subscriptions (mostly the reason it’s at the top of this list), and more free features available in addition to being user-friendly. It is available on multiple platforms (web site, Android app, iPhone app, and Windows Phone app).

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2. Feedly

Feedly is the most popular reader with a smooth and extremely easy-to-use interface. It may be the easiest way to access RSS. You can have up to 100 site subscriptions with a free account, and its algorithms are very good at providing you with relevant popular content. This site offers a web platform and apps for Android app and iPhone app.

3. The Old Reader

This program allows you to discover up to 100 subscriptions with a relatively affordable premium option and is excellent at organizing popular content with a social focus. It also supports many platforms which you can learn about here to download the suitable app for your device.

4. NewsBlur

The NewsBlur interface is not easy enough, and it gives you only 64 free sites, but the machine learning that allows you to access precisely the type of content you want by voting or reducing a certain number of articles leads to effectively setting NewsBlur.

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After choosing one of the above sites, all you have to do is start fetching your sources. Most websites have an RSS feed that you can take directly and place on the site, or you can copy the link of your favorite site and paste it into your favorite feed reader site to automatically pull the necessary information.

If you are a new internet user, you may not have heard of the “RSS” service before or used it naturally. However, it is still a significant part of the internet, completely void of the issues and personal opinions that often influence information shared on social networks. While its content aggregation properties are excellent, the most valuable feature of RSS may be its ability to help users achieve a balance in the perspectives they read beyond the trends of Facebook and Twitter.