WEB FEEDS
A list a site publishes
RSS is a dialect of XML. A feed's channel holds items, each with a title or description and often a link to the full story.
Check a routeNot every feed is chosen for you.
Social apps rank posts for you. Web feeds such as RSS and Atom are older and simpler: a website publishes a list of its latest items, and a reader app you choose collects them.
- A site publishes a list
- Your reader collects it
- You choose the sources
- Web feeds in three steps
THE SHORT ANSWER
Two kinds of feed,
two ways to choose.
A web feed lists what a site published.
An algorithm feed picks what a platform shows you.
HISTORY
Since 1999
The first version, RSS 0.90, appeared in March 1999. The current RSS 2.0 specification dates from March 2009; Atom became an internet standard in 2005.
See the numbers
ALGORITHM FEEDS
Picked for you
Ofcom says news increasingly reached people through algorithm-driven feeds and shares, making consumption more personalised and continuous.
Read more
INSIDE A WEB FEED
What a feed file
actually contains.
The specifications are public, so anyone can read how a feed is put together. These are the parts that matter to readers.
A channel with three basics
An RSS channel must have a title, a link to the matching website and a short description.
Items for each story
Each item can carry a title, link and synopsis. At least one of title or description must be present.
Attachments for media
An enclosure element describes a media object attached to an item, so a feed can carry more than text.
Found automatically
Autodiscovery lets browsers and other software find a site's feed from a link element in the page's header.
TWO NUMBERS WORTH KNOWING
Most news arrives
through a go-between.
Two findings from Ofcom's
News Report 2026.
73%
Adults who access news via an online intermediary
Nearly three-quarters of UK adults find news through social media, video sites, search engines, aggregators or AI tools, against 57% who go to publishers directly.
INTERMEDIARIES · OFCOM 2026
5%
Adults who use intermediaries alone
Very few rely only on intermediaries, and just 2% get news solely through social media. Ofcom says intermediaries mostly add to other ways of getting news.
ONLY ONE ROUTE · OFCOM 2026
Ofcom notes that many people who say they get news through an intermediary are still seeing news made by traditional news organisations on those platforms.
A QUICK ROUTE CHECK
How do UK adults
reach the news?
Pick a route to see how many adults aged 16 and over use it to access news. The bar shows how widely it is used.
Based on Ofcom's News Report 2026 (published 15 September 2026).
RSS AND ATOM
Two formats,
one idea.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Its versions run from RSS 0.90 in 1999 through RSS 2.0 in 2002 to version 2.0.11, published by the RSS Advisory Board on 30 March 2009, which is still the current version.
Atom was published as RFC 4287 in December 2005, an XML-based format for web content and metadata. Every Atom feed and every entry must have exactly one id, one title and one updated time.
In conversation
Questions people ask
What is an RSS feed?
A file a website publishes listing its latest items. RSS is a dialect of XML, and each item has a title or a short description, often with a link to the full page.
What does RSS stand for?
Really Simple Syndication, according to the RSS Advisory Board, which publishes the current RSS 2.0 specification.
Is Atom the same as RSS?
It does the same job in a different format. Atom was standardised as RFC 4287 in December 2005, and requires every feed and entry to have an id, a title and an updated time.
How does a reader know a site has a feed?
Through autodiscovery: the site adds a link element to the head of its web pages pointing to the feed, which browsers and reader apps can detect.
How do most people in the UK get online news?
Ofcom found 73% of adults access news through online intermediaries such as social media, search, aggregators or AI tools, while 57% go to news publishers directly.
Sources
Each figure on this page comes from the sources below.