Did You Know You Have an RSS Feed on Medium?
How to use Medium’s RSS feed for your online writing
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Did you know that Medium.com includes an RSS feed for every user and publication on the platform?
If you were like me, you might have seen this term mentioned around the internet on various blogs, stores, and websites — but not really know what it means.
So, this article will quickly cover what it is, how it’s normally used, and list a few ways it can help you on Medium.com itself.
Let’s get started!
What is the definition of an RSS feed?
For those unfamiliar with the older technology (it’s been around since the ‘90s), RSS stands for:
- RDF Site Summary (RDF = Resource Description Framework)
- Really Simple Syndication
- Sich Site Summary
- Ricki’s Sweet Saxophone
It doesn’t really matter which acronym you remember (the 1st one is proper), as most people will just say RSS.
What is an RSS feed?
In simple terms, an RSS feed is a page on your blog or website that posts information every time there is an update on that site.
More importantly, the information posted in the feed is computer-readable and will contain details like the publishing date, the author's name, and either the full or summarized text of an article.
This means that other websites or feed readers (or news aggregators) can easily and automatically find updates from your site without you doing any work!
Users can also subscribe to individual RSS feeds to form a kind of collection of blog posts, other links, or even podcasts.
Imagine making a personalized Google News Aggregator that only allows links from RSS feeds you follow.
Is an RSS feed still useful in 2020?
Yes and no. Many websites still use an RSS feed to automatically promote their work, but the technology itself is becoming less and less supported around the world wide web.
