The intent is for this to be one of those links that you send to your family when they ask: "What is RSS? Why would I care about such a thing?". If you are already familiar enough with RSS to know what it means, then this article is not for you. Move along. Nothing new to see here. You can go about your business. These are not the droids you are looking for. Good, now that they're gone, lets get down to business. Why do I care about RSS? Definitions can wait; this is the meat of it. RSS is basically a way to get the news you want from the sources you want in the format you want, when you want it. Think of it as your own personalized Associated Press service. There is even a little bit of dark pleasure involved as you are the editor in this whole process and you can "fire" sources you dislike by unsubscribing to their feed (explained later). Don't lie, I'm sure there are a few columnists in your local paper you'd like to fire and with RSS, you can! Much more than news It is true that the most common use for RSS is news feeds, but it can be used for anything that might be of interest to other people. Some sites use it for press releases , some for bug reports , some for articles of interest , others are just for fun and, of course, there are some focused on the latest and greatest deals . Best of all, you can include sources that most newspapers can't or won't use. Opinions, technical journals, Alumnus organizations, hobbies...