If you've been on Internet for even a minimum amount of time over last couple of years, you've probably seen or at least heard about blogs. The term blog is a contraction of "web log", and as name implies, a blog is really just an online journal or notebook. Now that sounds like a place to write "Dear Diary" entries that are open to world, but smart marketers can use a blog for a lot more than that.

You've seen posts on all marketing forums - what is RSS? Should I be using it? What can it do for me? Let's take a look at some basics of RSS, which stands for, alternatively, Really Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary, or RDF Site Summary (Rich Document Format Site Summary). Whatever term used, they all mean same thing.

RSS is used to easily and automatically allow information from one web site to be displayed either in a newsreader, or on another web site. A newsreader is a piece of software that resides on your home computer, and that is programmed to display RSS formatted data, known as feeds, in a format that is easy for humans to read. Other software, including some popular web page generation programs, can display RSS feeds on pages of another web site. Either way, feeds are usually updated automatically whenever content on originating site is updated.

RSS is nothing more than a standard way of formatting data - for example, content of your web page or blog - in a certain way. Formatting is done according to a certain accepted standard or specification. For example, there is general agreement as to formatting of RSS .91, RSS 2.0, and so on. (Yes, there are unfortunately several versions of what standard means). RSS is name of standard for formatting, but language used is XML - Extensible Markup Language. XML is a superset of HTML, and is very commonly used for exchanging data between computer systems.