How Does it Work? Publishers and webmasters provide content and news in an RSS feed. Users view content of interest in an RSS reader or news aggregator. The aggregator or reader contains collection of feeds that are of interest to user. As RSS feed is updated content in reader or aggregator updates with new information. At any point, users can remove a feed from their aggregator or reader and no longer receive information from that source. Ultimately, user is choosing news and content they wish to view.

As RSS has increased in popularity more and more webmasters and publishers have adopted RSS as an alternative communication stream. Webmasters use an RSS graphic to indicate content is available via RSS.

RSS Aggregators and News Readers Generally, there are three types of RSS readers that users use to view feeds that they've subscribed to. Feeds can be viewed in a desktop application, web-based aggregator, or plug-in aggregator.

Desktop RSS Readers Standalone desktop applications generally run in background, similar to an e-mail client, automatically refreshing headlines as newfeeds are updated. The RSS readers collect feeds and refresh items in feeds each time they are updated. An example of a popular standalone desktop RSS reader is: FeedDemon - http://www.feeddemon.com