What are web feeds?

Web feeds are a standardized way to represent and distribute content from one website to another system for reading, aggregating, or processing. Popular standards like RSS, Atom, and JSON Feed are structured data files that summarize the latest content published on a website. They allow readers to get updates without visiting the website itself.

The concept dates back to the late 1990s, when Netscape introduced RSS as a way to distribute news headlines. It started as a niche feature, and quickly became a cornerstone of how blogs, news sites, and publishers shared their updates.

Content syndication and the publish-subscribe model of content distribution

Content syndication is a method to make content published on one website available to other sites or applications. Content creators distribute their articles, updates, or media, allowing consumers to conveniently access a wide variety of sources. In the context of web feeds, it means a blog post, news article, or podcast published on one site can automatically appear in feed readers or other software that subscribe to it.

Web feeds rely on the publish-subscribe model. The publisher (e.g. a blog) publishes a feed, and subscribers (e.g. your feed reader) subscribe to it. This model is pull-based, subscribers check the publisher’s feed for updates at regular intervals.

Benefits of web feeds

One of the strongest arguments for web feeds is user control. Unlike social media, where an algorithm decides what you see, web feeds give you the full picture. You choose exactly which sources you follow and get updates in chronological order. No surprises. No manipulation.

Additionally, web feeds allow users to follow multiple sources conveniently in one place. With feed readers you can follow dozens of websites, newsletters, or creators and consume all of their content from a single dashboard. It’s like building your own newspaper, tailored exactly to your interests.

Another advantage is openness. Web feeds are platform-independent, open technologies. Everyone can publish a feed, and everyone can consume it. There’s no lock-in and no gatekeeping. It’s the internet as it was meant to be. Interoperable and user-centric.

Compared to email subscriptions, web feeds offer a cleaner and less intrusive way to stay updated. Emails can clutter inboxes, but feeds keep subscriptions neatly organized and separate from personal communications, providing a more efficient reading experience.

How web feeds work

In technical terms, web feeds are structured text files (usually XML or JSON) hosted by websites. These files contain a list of recent content items, including metadata such as title, publication date, summary, and a direct link to the full content.

Websites publish feeds by generating and updating these files whenever new content is added or existing content changes. Typically, web publishing platforms (like WordPress or Substack) generate and maintain feeds automatically, with no manual effort required.

To consume feeds, software periodically requests these files and checks if there are any updates. If new content is detected, it processes it further. Feed readers for example store the article and show it to their users. This repeated polling mechanism is simple, reliable, and highly effective.

Ecosystem overview

There are three main feed formats: RSS, Atom, and JSON Feed. RSS is the oldest format. Atom is slightly newer and was developed to address a couple shortcomings of RSS. JSON Feed was developed about 10 years after Atom and, as the name indicates, uses JSON instead of XML. This makes it easier to work with as many programming languages have JSON support built-in.

For managing multiple feeds, OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) files are commonly used. OPML enables users to export, import, and backup their feed subscriptions easily.

Blogrolls are lists of feeds. Blog authors often share the feeds they subscribe to as a blogroll on their website. Sharing them as OPML file makes them easily accessible and allows website visitors to quickly subscribe to all feeds, but displaying them as normal list on the website is just as valid. They help with discovery and recommendation of feeds, which is a typical pain point of web feeds.

For readers, the primary way to consume feeds is through feed readers. For example Lighthouse, Feedly, or Inoreader. But feeds are also used in automation tools like Zapier or IFTTT, which can trigger actions when a new item appears in a feed.

Feed creation is typically automatic, handled by publishing platforms such as WordPress, Ghost, Substack, and many others. Almost all blogging and CMS platforms include built-in or easily activated feed support, making feed publishing accessible to nearly every content creator.

Limitations

Despite their utility, web feeds have some inherent limitations. One common issue is archiving. Feeds typically include only the most recent 10-20 items, with older content is only accessible on the website itself, not through the feed.

Discoverability is another challenge. On social media, new content and accounts to follow are always present. With web feeds you have to search for and subscribe to them yourself.

Additionally, many sites don't display links to their feeds clearly, which makes it harder to find the links to the feeds. Dedicated feed finding tools often help, but even they don’t always find the relevant feeds.

The pull-based mechanism means software has to periodically check feeds, which can lead to delayed content delivery. Update frequency depends on how often the software checks, which may be every few minutes or only once a day.

Common use-cases

Web feeds are widely used for news reading, as a streamlined way to follow multiple news outlets across diverse topics. Readers can curate personal news streams tailored precisely to their interests.

Following specific blogs or newsletters is another popular use-case. Enthusiasts, hobbyists, and professionals frequently subscribe to feeds focused on their niche interests, like technology, programming, cooking, or entrepreneurship.

Job seekers and freelancers can use web feeds to track new job postings across multiple sites. Many job platforms publish feeds that alert subscribers instantly to new opportunities, allowing them to respond quickly and stay competitive.

Marketing and automation scenarios also frequently leverage web feeds. Marketers can automate content distribution across social media or email newsletters, trigger actions based on competitor updates, or monitor industry trends using feed-based tools.

Current state and future

Today, web feeds have wide-ranging support across online publishing tools, from blogs to major platforms. Although big social media companies like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X), and TikTok don't support web feeds, many other platforms do. Notable examples include Reddit, YouTube, Bluesky, and various blogging and content platforms.

In recent years a lot of traffic moved to the big social media platforms that don’t support RSS. This, plus the discontinuation of the Google Reader (which was a popular feed reader) as trigger event, gave the appearance that web feeds are dying.

This is a misconception. Apart from social media, support for web feeds is a strong as ever, and new products are developed continuously. Users can choose between many different high-quality products to make use of feeds.

In fact, the resurgence of interest in privacy, user control, and decentralization has sparked renewed growth in the feed ecosystem. And with social media becoming ever more polarized, having an alternative that offers an open, reliable, and efficient way to manage online content consumption has never been more valuable.