With the widespread use of frequently updated web sites such as blogs, wikis, and social bookmarking sites, users had to keep up with updates on many web sites using their web browsers on a daily basis. But as the task of keeping up with numerous web sites 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 web site. 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 web sites and users. These...