With the widespread use of frequently updated websites such as blogs, wikis and social bookmarking sites, users had to keep up with updates on many websites using their web browsers on a daily basis. But as the task of keeping up with numerous websites became tedious, the need arose for more efficient methods to track updates. Fortunately, a technology called web feeds already existed for providing users with frequently updated content. The concept behind this technology is simple:
An XML document containing the latest updates is published on the website. This document is called a web feed.
Users can take advantage of this document by subscribing to it using a specialized program called a feed reader or aggregator.
This program polls the feed on a regular basis and notifies the user when updates are available.
Web feeds became an efficient and easy solution for tracking updates, and the technology of feeds and aggregators quickly spread among websites and users. Nowadays...