Fun fact
RSS was born in 1999 — four years before Facebook, five before podcasts adopted it. Its creator, Dave Winer, described it as "the first social network": instead of following people, you follow sites. When podcasting exploded in 2004, it rode entirely on RSS; every podcast app is still, under the hood, an RSS reader. And unlike every social platform since, no algorithm decides what appears in your feed — items arrive in plain chronological order, exactly as published. That is why journalists, researchers and developers quietly never left.
Tool usage guide
- Install a feed reader (Feedbro, NetNewsWire, or Miniflux) or use a web-based one.
- Copy the feed URL of a site you like — SimpyTool's is simpytool.com/feed.xml.
- Add the URL to your reader; new articles and tools arrive automatically.
- Curious what a feed looks like inside? Feeds are XML — compare the two data formats with the JSON vs XML comparison tool.