What are RSS Feeds?

What the heck is an RSS Feed?
And what are all these little buttons for?


RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a format used to distribute headlines, news stories, photos video and a wide variety of similar content across the Internet to various news and information pages.


Owners of blogs and web sites that update their content frequently can also make their new posts and content available in files called RSS feeds. Consumers can receive and review their feeds in a newsreader such as My Yahoo!, iGoogle, My AOL and My MSN making it easier and faster to keep up with new information on all their favorite sites.


Keeping this tutorial very simple; Yahoo, Google, AOL and MSN all offer a personalized version of their home pages that allow you to rearrange and add or delete content as you choose. Those personalized home pages are My Yahoo!, iGoogle, My AOL and My MSN. They are all easily found and accessed from their main home pages, and they are all newsreaders.


Example: If you are logged into your “My Yahoo” home page in one browser window and click the [+ My Yahoo] button on the Earrings Galore website (in another browser), my Earrings Galore New Items feed will be added to your “My Yahoo” page. With the feed in place, you will be able to see the new earrings that are added to the site and if you want to see more you can click through to my site.


You will also see an [+Add Content] button with several feed choices you can add right there on your MY Home Page.
If you have a feed’s URL, you can enter it by clicking “Add RSS Feed”


Feeds can be added to your Favorites Bar and/or saved to a Feeds folder on your computer.


Hope this helps. and you’ll start subscribing to and enjoying your own personal streams of information on your various newsreaders.