A bit of explanation for RSS newbies: RSS stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication and means a web-based technology of delivering news of various kinds from their sources directly to the users, in the form of a simple feed - that’s it!
You can use an RSS reader of your choice to subscribe to your favourite sites, blogs, job listing portals, online shops, etc, and thus get all their news collected in one place. That would help you to keep abreast of the latest events, hot deals, digital media updates, and fresh articles without actually visiting all those websites one-by-one.
How to subscribe? It’s a cakewalk: there might be an orange button with a text suggesting that you ‘subscribe via RSS’ on a site, but most of feed reading tools can automatically check a website to see if it syndicates an RSS channel and then you can go on by adding it to the subscriptions.
Why Social Media can never replace RSS
Today more people than ever get news from social networks and that might be an issue: the content of social media feed heavily depends on our (and our friends’) reactions and votes (i.e. likes, shares, reposts, etc), which is not bad at all, but it may lead to formation of so called ‘echo chambers’ keeping us within a narrowed and manipulated scope of interests, so it seems that we started to miss a lot at this point. Unlike most of the social networks, RSS does not include any mechanism that can automatically promote, filter or ‘micro-target’ certain content at a specific user according to trending opinions or his\her recent actions, location, and personal preferences.
It’s as simple as that – Really Simple Syndication. You only have to choose the resources and get the information you’re purely interested in, with no additional moderation or limitations, except for those you set yourself.
RSS technology can boast of a few strong advantages over the social media (as a news source, of course), making it a favourable choice for users who still appreciate their personal freedom of choice:
- No ads or promoted content mixed into your newsfeed.
- No personal data tracking or questionable censorship policies.
- No deceptive SMM strategies or shady inner algorithms trying to take advantage of your attention.
- No issues with sudden account bans, fake users or dishonest reports.
Let us be clear: the point of social media is to create a safe environment for people to communicate (and they are pretty great at it), while RSS is a rather simple way to control the incoming flow of information and build a news digest with your own rules.
Once you decide to give RSS a try, it won't take long to realize the benefits: you may save so much precious time and nerves by getting rid of all those useless content, rubbish clickbait, and annoying ads that are flooding the social media. With the help of feed readers (aka RSS aggregators) you can manage your news feeds wisely and focus on things that really matter.
How to keep the Simple Syndication really simple
If you feel excited about the ideas of RSS, and would like to follow a few worthy sites, then you should begin the journey with signing up for a nice feed aggregator.
We at Feedreader believe that simplicity is the key virtue of RSS, so we created Feedreader Online that lets you check the news on the go, without hassle, personal data collection or overwhelming functionality.
Here are some Feedreader Online features for you to enjoy RSS:
- Radically simplified and streamlined user interface.
- Easy to sign up and use (no need to read any lengthy manuals).
- Clean and uncluttered view: no banner ads or promoted content.
- Safe and anonymous usage: keep all your personally identifiable info to yourself + benefit from https encrypted data transmission.
- Responsive support service providing timely assistance to everyone.
- Free of charge for all users.
Feedreader Online keeps managing the newsfeeds ultimately simple and makes your reading experience really pleasant, so you’ll be ….
Never fed up with feeds
There are more of great RSS reading tools out there, including free and paid solutions, but just a few provide additional services that can be of use without even starting an account with them.
We talk about Feedreader Observe: this tool lets you discover new RSS channels, top stories and alternative media choices with no registration. You’ll just need to copy & paste the link into the directory’s search bar to get a preview of any website’s feed (if it syndicates any), and check their status, reputation plus some other analytical data.
