Amy Gahran has posted an excellent and thorough tutorial on webfeeds (RSS) that will now become the first reference resource I send people to when they ask me about RSS feeds, news feeds and webfeeds (the new term clamoring for attention and adoption, which Amy explains in part 11 of her tutorial).
Excerpt:
“A WEBFEED PLAYS TWO ROLES
First, it’s a publishing channel for delivering announcements of what’s new on site, or other kinds of messages or content, to an online audience.
Second, it’s a syndication channel that makes it easy for other sites to find or even republish a site’s content. Played well, these roles can vastly extend the audience for a site’s content.”