Note: This group of web pages is a part of the upcoming RSS/ Web Feeds Resource Guide free ebook. Check back often for a release date. These pages are also a supplement to the RSS Cases blog, which will be going live shortly. The blog is aimed at anyone who publishes articles, audio, or video and wants a standard way to syndicate this content. It replaces three older blogs, which split up Marketing, Development and Metrics/ Analysis discussion threads.

The term web feeds was coined by Microsoft as their terminology for RSS (Really Simple Syndication) - however, Chameleon Integration Systems uses the term to encompass all Internet syndication formats. RSS was created by Dave Winer as a way to easily syndicate text (article and blog) content .

Somewhere along the way, RSS mutated and the RDF (Resource Description Format) coding was used, then later abandoned. As well, another group of developers, feeling that RSS was somewhat lacking, created an alternate syndication format called Atom.

All three formats - RSS, Atom, RDF - are derivative of the XML (eXtensible Markup Language) specification, so it is relatively easy to convert one format into the other. These formats have their differences, but essentially serve the same purpose: a means to easily syndicate content across the Internet.

There is a second purpose these syndication formats serve: To allow Internet users a relatively simple way to aggregate and consume content from multiple Internet sources.

It should be noted that the Atom 1.0 syndication format is now a W3C standard. W3C is the Internet and computing industry-based authority that has approved various Internet standards including the HTML and XML web languages.

While Atom 1.0 is a standard, RSS has wider penetration across the Internet. RSS 2.0 is the current version, with RSS 3.0 in development. (RDF was an older version of RSS.) Microsoft is working on a couple of extensions for RSS, to allow sharing of feed content items between publishers. Despite RSS's relative popularity, many websites publish web feeds that support several versions of RSS and Atom.

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