What is an RSS feed and how do I use it?

I keep hearing about the RSS feeds, but I have no idea what it is or how I should use it in my articles.  Please help.

cherylone, 

Try this: 

- Press <Ctrl> and click on the little square orange button at the top of this thread in the white bar. 

- It will open a new tab in your browser. In that tab, highlight and copy (Ctrl-C) the URL

- Create a new wizzle (or open a work-in-progress wizzle) and insert a "Feed" module in it. 

- In the module's edit mode, paste (Ctrl-V) the URL you just copied. 

- Hit Preview. (Or Save)

You will see this thread in it. 

That's the purpose of it. Let's say you like a really cool page on someone's blog and want to include it in your wizzle. If the blog owner provides an RSS feed, you can bring it into your wizzle as an integral part of it. So when the blog gets updated, your wizzle will get the updated info too. 

Hope that made some sense. 

Bhavesh, that was the best explanation about RSS FEED provided on the internet. If only I had read this when I was learning about it, it would be much easier. :)

Yes, perfect sense, thank you so much for the explanation.  I have been going crazy trying to figure out what they do.  Thank you again.

Mladen: 13. Apr 2012, 18:51

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Bhavesh, that was the best explanation about RSS FEED provided on the internet. If only I had read this when I was learning about it, it would be much easier. :)

You are very kind, Mladen! And here we are, drinking from the fountain of your wisdom and enjoying your articles.

Happy to be of help, cherylone.

Not only can you use RSS feeds to bring outside information into your articles but you can also use YOUR own RSS feed to tell the world about what you have published.

I produced a series of articles on Hubpages all about how to use, create, and distribute RSS feeds.  If anyone is interested they can all be accessed by using the following RSS feed in the way that Bhavesh has indicated, or just copy and pasted to the URL entry box on any browser (when you will see what an RSS feed can look like in HTML code), or added to Google Reader, or inserted in iGoogle:

http://hubpages.com/tag/humrsshubs/latest/?rss

Some of them are specific to how to create Hubpages RSS feeds, but many are generic.

RSS feeds are very powerful in your promotional efforts and once set up in the right places (as given in the articles in the RSS feed above), save you an inordinate amount of time.

Wizzley RSS feeds are very basic, and sometimes are rejected by aggregators because the description field is not set up properly for all readers. It could also be improved if there were some way to limit personal RSS feeds to individual categories - I shall have to investigate to see if that is possible.

You can also use RSS feeds to auto-update Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn using Twitterfeed (see my 'Using Twitterfeed' article here on Wizzley), and many other sites using other free services. I use RSS feeds everywhere I can, and this is a huge part of my promotional strategy, which once set up is on autopilot.

If anyone is interested I can write some more Wizzley articles on how and where to use RSS feeds. I have not written these so far because of the limitations I have encountered with the Wizzley RSS feed set up.

Wow, thank you so much, humagaia and Bhavesh, for all of the info.  I think I will begin experimenting with RSS feeds to see what I can come up with.  Thank you humagaia for the link to your articles on RSS feeds.

Thanks, Bhavesh, for the explanation that gave me the idea that perhaps I need to start learning this as well as all the other stuff I'm learning.

Thanks to Humagaia also for sending me off to your hubs.  Now I see how much I have to read and learn to understand this.

At least I now know WHY this is important to me. That's the first step, right?  Thanks for the question, cherylone.