RSS = Really Simple Syndication

RSS is a way for any website, including blogs, to provide content out in a format that allows subscriptions. These subscriptions can come by email or by a news aggregator such as Bloglines.

A news aggregator or news reader, whatever you want to call it, lets you take those RSS files, often called “feeds,” and show them to you in a readable format.

RSS files are not really meant for you to see. They are meant for your computer to read. You simply choose the method most convenient for you. I don’t know of many who read it in the email format (I do know that Robert Scoble is one, however).

I personally use Bloglines. So, when I click on my Bloglines subscription button, manually add the feed, or use the lovely XML button on most weblogs to add the feed, Bloglines simply asks me where I want to put it. I choose the folder, or make a new one, to keep things organized.

So, what happens is this:

Bloglines periodically checks that RSS feed to see if the author of that blog/website has added new content (new posts or articles).

If yes, it will pull all that information over via RSS into a sequential listing of the posts, recentmost ones being at the top. Each post comes down the line separately, since each post has its own “permalink” - it’s own unique place in the Internet. This makes it easy to reference that article, since its place will never change. How cool is that?

From your perspective, when you go to Bloglines, it will bold the folder and the blog name and tell you how many new posts there are.

To read them, you simply click them.

Have any questions, let me know.