You may have noticed a particular icon on some of the websites you’ve visited. An orange box with what looks like waves emanating from a dot in the bottom-left corner, this icon indicates that the website uses something called RSS technology.

So, what is RSS, and what is it for?   

Simply put, it is there so enterprising visitors like yourself can add that website’s content to an RSS feed.

What is RSS?

RSS stands for “really simple syndication” or “rich site summary.” Either one works, because they effectively describe two parts of a single process.

Let’s say there are a few sites you visit regularly, if not daily. If these sites have the orange icon, you can use a kind of software called an RSS feed reader (or news aggregator) to collect their highlights in real-time. This goes for news sites, podcasts and web shows, and even blog entries.

There are also online RSS feeds and browser extensions that allow you to subscribe to different websites to see their content aggregated there. Feedly is an example of such a website.

Using the RSS feed reader, you can quickly and easily access numerous updates, all in one place. This makes it far easier to stay current on the topics that interest you because you aren’t bouncing from place to place to find articles to read.

How to Add Websites to an RSS Feed

Many readers enable you to search internally for websites to follow, but if you see the telltale orange icon, you may be able to simply click on it to add it to your RSS feed. Otherwise, it will bring you to a new, very simple webpage that features links to articles and some website identifiers. Copy that page’s URL into your reader, and you’re off to the races.

Hopefully, this helps explain the concept of an RSS feed and how it can potentially be helpful to you.