| What is an RSS feed? What is it used for? How does it help readers who regularly follow a blog and would like to on the subject? What is Atom? How does RSS compare to Atom? Which one is better for my use? What is an RSS aggregator? What is it used for? |
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RSS stands for "Rich Site Summary". It is used to deliver web content that regularly changes to the user such as yourself. In other words, let's say you're following the blogs of ten different people. It is a pain to have to visit each blog individually, especially if several are constantly posting new posts, and you're constantly having to jump around between blogs. RSS makes it so that you get all the posts shown in one place, via a feed reader.
Atom is a more advanced version of RSS, and includes features that are not available with RSS. For example, Atom is more flexible than RSS. Atom gives you a link, a title, and a description for each feed, as well as the feed itself. This makes it easier for users to tell when the feed was last updated. RSS just has the feed. Atom also has a way of making it easier for users to subscribe to feeds. Finally, Atom is more secure than RSS.
Overall it looks like Atom is the winner, because it seems more user friendly and more secure.
