RSS syndication is becoming increasingly popular day by day and most of us keep coming across these initials whenever we are in the company of our “tech” friends. RSS stands for a number of things which are basically the same thing only. The technology refers to Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0) or RDF Site Summary (RSS 1.0 and RSS 0.90) or Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91), which form a family of content feed formats that are used for publishing frequently updated web content like news, podcasts or blogs.

RSS allows content from one site to be republished or syndicated by another. These RSS documents are called feeds or channels and they generally contain the summary of content from some other associated web site. The technology is becoming extremely popular because it lets a user monitor the contents from his favorite web sites automatically rather than checking them manually for updates. It is extremely beneficial to the websites providing feeds as well, because it promotes the site and its contents without any complicated content sharing methods or paying advertisement costs. Apart from syndicating your site’s content on other web sites, RSS also lets you disperse information to cell phones, PDAs and email ticklers.

Apart from this, RSS syndication also lets you save on resources, because you do not have to post multiple copies of the same article, but it rather creates multiple points of entry to one article. The best part is that it removes the need for developing new content for your web site every hour, since RSS syndication lets you harness almost all available web resources for information to put on your web site. You are not bound by copyright laws either, since the feeds on your web site will be determined by the users, rather than the owner of the site.

It helps increase your page ranking also because of the number of back-links that you create. Since RSS feeds are compiled as per the user’s choices, there is no pressure on the publisher for maintaining lists or about strict privacy policies. You also do not need to bother yourself with spam or copyright policies. While RSS syndication provides a large number of benefits to web site owners, it is a great boon for users also. For one, it discourages forcing of content on consumers by letting them choose their own areas and content of interest. RSS technology lets viewers choose the content that they wish to see, hear and read rather than jamming their mailboxes and web pages with unwanted information.