RSS is widely used by the weblog community to share the latest entries' headlines or their full text, and even attached multimedia files. (See podcasting, vodcasting, broadcasting, screencasting, Vloging, and MP3 blogs.) In mid 2000, use of RSS spread to many of the major news organizations, including Reuters, CNN, and the BBC. These providers allow other websites to incorporate their "syndicated" headline or headline-and-short-summary feeds under various usage agreements. RSS is now used for many purposes, including marketing, bug-reports, or any other activity involving periodic updates or publications.

A program known as a feed reader or aggregator can check RSS-enabled webpages on behalf of a user and display any updated articles that it finds. It is now common to find RSS feeds on major Web sites, as well as many smaller ones. It is very common to find RSS feeds on Blog and Wiki sites.

Client-side readers and aggregators are typically constructed as standalone programs or extensions to existing programs like web browsers. Browsers are moving toward integrated feed reader functions, such as Opera_browser. Such programs are available for various operating systems. See list of news aggregators.

Web-based feed readers and news aggregators require no software installation and make the user's "feeds" available on any computer with Web access. Some aggregators syndicate (combine) RSS feeds into new feeds, e.g., take all football related items from several sports feeds and provide a new football feed. There are also search engines for content published via RSS feeds like Feedster or Blogdigger.

On Web pages, RSS feeds are typically linked with an orange rectangle, , or with the letters or .

So how do people view RSS feeds?

As you can see from this website rss feeds can be displayed within a web page. Many web surfers won't even realize that what they are looking at is an RSS feed because it looks like part of the pages content or maybe an advert.

An RSS aggregator (also known as a news aggregator or news reader) is a piece of software which reads RSS feeds. They are usually stand-alone programs but may also be integrated into another program such as email software.

You can find list of available RSS Aggregators in Resources.

Desktop aggregators are software applications that are dedicated to the task of managing the subscriptions, monitoring and syndicated content of a user. Many aggregators display content in a window or list view similar to any email-program.

Other desktop aggregators have browser-based interfaces that look and operate like a Web-based aggregator, but are typically run on a local system and administered by the user. The interface may be served through an integrated HTTP server, that can be accessed from anywhere once the user's network is properly configured.

Some desktop applications may have aggregator functionality in addition to their primary function, such as a web browser, email client, music player or weblog editor.

An online aggregator is a website service offering aggregator functionality, typically hosted by a service provider or portal site. Feeds are checked for updates by the service, thus reducing the bandwidth that multiple desktop aggregators would consume polling feeds individually. Since they are remotely hosted, online aggregators are accessible from anywhere, but are only as reliable as the service provider. These aggregators can be free or commercial. Web-based aggregators of blogs which are related to some project or group are often called "planets", named after the program Planet used to generate them.

Providers of aggregation services to news portals and search engines (not necessarily direct to end users).

Source: Wikipedia