Web feed

For Atom and RSS feeds from Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Syndication.

A typical web feed logo

A web feed is a data format used for serving users' frequently updated content. Content distributors syndicate a web feed, thereby allowing users to subscribe to it. Making a collecting of web feeds accessible in one spot is known as aggregation.

In the typical scenario of using web feeds, a content provider publishes a feed link on their site which end users can register with an aggregator program (also called a feed reader or a news reader) running on their own machines; doing this is usually as simple as dragging the link from the web browser to the aggregator. When instructed, the aggregator asks all the servers in its feed list if they have new content; if so, the aggregator either makes a note of the new content or downloads it. Aggregators can be scheduled to check for new content periodically.

The kinds of content delivered by a web feed are typically HTML (webpage content) or links to webpages and other kinds of digital media. Often when websites provide web feeds to notify users of content updates, they only include summaries in the web feed rather than the full content itself.

Web feeds are operated by many news web sites, weblogs, schools, and podcasters.

Benefits

Compared to websites, web feeds have a few advantages for the user experience:

• Users can be notified of new content without having to actively check for it.
• The information presented to users in an aggregator is typically much simpler than most websites. This spares users the mental effort of navigating complex web pages, each with its own layout.
• Media files can be automatically downloaded without user intervention.

Web feeds also have some advantages compared to receiving frequently published content via email:

• When subscribing to a feed, the user does not disclose their email address, so the user is not increasing their exposure to threats associated with email: spam, viruses, phishing, and identity theft.
• If the user wants to stop receiving news, they do not have to send an 'unsubscribe' request; the user can simply remove the feed from their aggregator.

How to use it

You need a feed reader—this is a tool like an email program. It's like getting an email every time one of your subscriptions updates their content, except no email address is required. There are many feed readers—some are online (like a webmail account), some are offline (you download the program to your computer), some are free and some aren't.

You may have come across feed readers already. If you use personalized home page services like My Yahoo or My MSN, you've got a feed reader—that's how content like news, weather and stock quotes appear on your personal page. You can also add content from any site with feeds to your page to get updates.

Other web-based tools are primarily dedicated to feed reading only. One of the most popular web-based feed readers at this point is Bloglines, which is also free and easy to get started with.

If you use the Firefox browser, you can also receive feeds from your tool bar by using the Live Bookmarks function. The next version of Internet Explorer will add this feature as well.

Finally, there are desktop-based feed readers, e.g. Newsgator and Feed Demon. These are like an email program for web feeds. Attensa for Outlook is a feed reader that puts the feeds in Microsoft Outlook.

You can look for the feed reader that best suits your needs at RSS Compendium.

How to add feeds to your feed reader

Not all websites currently provide feeds, but it is growing rapidly in popularity and many sites (not just blogs), including The Guardian, New York Times and CNN now provide it. First, look for the subscription or feed options. Many websites have links labelled XML, RSS or Atom; or they may have an orange button like the one pictured above.

Then, you can either click the relevant links (e.g. the "add to my Yahoo!" button, if you're using My Yahoo!) or copy-paste the link in to your feed reader. Sometimes there will be a button for your particular feed reader on the blog that will take you to the appropriate subscription page. Feed aggregators like Feedburner are designed to help readers easily add new feeds (in a variety of formats) to their favored feed reader.

Technical definition

A web feed is a document (often XML-based) which contains content items with web links to longer versions. News websites and blogs are common sources for web feeds, but feeds are also used to deliver structured information ranging from weather data to "top ten" lists of hit tunes to search results. The two main web feed formats are RSS and Atom.

The terms "publishing a feed" and syndication are used to describe making available a feed for an information source, such as a blog. Like syndicated print newspaper features or broadcast programs, web feed contents may be shared and republished by other web sites. (For that reason, one popular definition of RSS is Really Simple Syndication.)

More often, feeds are subscribed to directly by users with aggregators or feed readers, which combine the contents of multiple web feeds for display on a single screen or series of screens. Some modern web browsers incorporate aggregator features. Depending on the aggregator, users typically subscribe to a feed by manually entering the URL of a feed or clicking a link in a web browser.

Web feeds are designed to be machine-readable rather than human-readable, which tends to be a source of confusion when people first encounter web feeds. This means that web feeds can also be used to automatically transfer information from one website to another, without any human intervention.

See also

• Atom (standard)
• RSS (file format)
• Web syndication
• Wikipedia:Syndication

References and external links

• yongology. "The web's quickest definition of a feed".
• Mark Pilgrim (18 December 2002). "What is RSS?". {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Dave Shea (19 May 2004). "What is RSS/XML/Atom/Syndication?". {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Amy Gahran (30 March 2004). "Webfeed as a nickname for RSS". {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Frank Bajak (27 February 2004). "Enthusiasts call Web feed next big thing". Boston Globe. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Meryl K. Evans (28 March 2004). "What is This RSS, XML, RDF and Atom Business?". {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Kathleen Bright (29 August 2006). "What is RSS?". {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Jemima Kiss (5 July 2005). "How to: Get to grips with RSS in three minutes". {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Seth Godin (2006). "Understanding RSS". {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Colin D. Devroe (30 December 2005). "The unified feed theory". {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Hans (1 January 2006). "Comment on The unified feed theory". {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Six Apart. "About Feeds".
• BBC. "News feeds from the BBC".
• Saku Peen. "Add RSS to Your Web Site using Javascript".
• Brian Clark. "What the Heck is RSS?".