BBC has reported 32 million Americans getting hooked to weblog. The survey, conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, showed that blog readership has shot up by 58% in the last year. Said growth can be credited to political blogs written and read during the US presidential campaigns.

The explosive growth of blogs have spawned the growth of another medium for sharing web information called RSS. Webreference.com defines an RSS as, Really Simple Syndication (RSS),  a lightweight XML format designed for sharing headlines and other Web content. Think of it as a distributable "What's New" for your site. Originated by UserLand in 1997 and subsequently used by Netscape to fill channels for Netcenter, RSS has evolved into a popular means of sharing content between sites (including the BBC, CNET, CNN, Disney, Forbes, Motley Fool, Wired, Red Herring, Salon, Slashdot, ZDNet, and more). RSS solves myriad problems webmasters commonly face, such as increasing traffic, and gathering and distributing news. RSS can also be the basis for additional content distribution services. An estimated six million Americans are now using RSS aggregators to subscribe to feeds from blogs, news sites and other websites.

With RSS you are equipped with a database like structure which contains information and news of what’s cooking in your site. Valued added is the fact that other services can be attached. Data from and to your web is facilitated at a very fast pace and this increases your chances of success. The structure of RSS very much enhances various points of entry to one data instead of several copies of same item.

Credit is due to innovators like Jonathan Eisenzopf, Dave Winer and Netscape for making possible the incorporation of other fields like news, time stamps etc.. into the ever growing RSS phenomena. Endless possibilities are offered and the future is yet to witness new exciting developments to the RSS fever.