What is the RSS feed?

[Futeki Yatsuhiro]

Hi, I understand that RSS has got to do with obtaining a website's latest updates in simple text format. However, I don't understand it's functionality.

So, what is a RSS feed?
What is it used for?
What's its purpose and how do you utilize it?
How does it help a website?
Why is it necessary?

Thanks & Best Regards!

[SeiRruf MalaWolSki]

You are correct. Not all services always offer an RSS feed however.

It's normally used for just that. Embedding and formatting content on a 3rd party website. You may program your own software or use existing RSS readers to parse RSS feeds.

In a nutshell, it's a way users can stream recent, uncluttered data off of the original website without physically being on the original website.

[Robert Browne]

RSS feeds are a simple an effective way to add fresh content on your site. When you add RSS feeds to your sites, your site will get updated automatically with headlines and snippets of new content from your RSS site sources. What this means for you is that your site enjoys better search engine rankings as search engine spiders always love fresh content. Your website visitors will also enjoy visiting your website as there would always be new interesting relevant links and information.

[Doctor]

RSS (Rich Site Summary); originally RDF Site Summary; often dubbed Really Simple Syndication, to publish frequently updated information: blog entries, news headlines, audio, video. An RSS document (called "feed", "web feed",or "channel") includes full or summarized text, and metadata, like publishing date and author's name.
The purpose of an RSS feed depends open the user, for example, a doctor has subscribed to a medical journal, he will automatically get updates for that journal, news about new improved medicine, tools, etc. instead of going to the site and checking for them.

Mostly these feeds are made for business, so that they donot have to visit each site to get updates but the updates are sent to them.