I talk about RSS feeds quite a bit — they’ve been around for decades and are one of the easiest (and best) ways to keep up with your favorite blogs. 

However, in the zeal of my love for it, I sometimes forget that not everyone knows what RSS feeds are, much less how to use them in the first place. 

Derek Kedziora (an Ukrainian blogger, no less!) beat me to the punch with his “gentle” missive on RSS and its purpose:

RSS stands for really simple syndication, and that’s precisely what it does. RSS turns content into a feed. An RSS reader then checks feeds to see if there is new content.

Let’s say I subscribe to 100 RSS feeds: a mix of blogs, newspapers, YouTube channels and forums. Each day I open up my RSS reader to see all of the new content from each of these feeds in one place. It’s a morning newspaper for the internet.

He brings up a great point how RSS feeds are a very patient (and quiet) form of keeping up:

There’s no FOMO. If I take a week off from my RSS reader, I don’t get any notifications begging me to come back. All of the content is sitting there waiting.

The solitude of an RSS reader is a fresh relief from the unrelenting firehoses of social media.

And you are free from the yoke of algorithms because *you* get to decide what to read.

For more, including Derek’s recommended RSS readers and such, mosey on over to: A gentle intro to RSS

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