RSS stands for really simple syndication and it allows you to provide a syndicated feed of content from your blog as well as subscribe to content on other websites including video and audio.  The beauty of RSS is that readers don’t have to constantly revisit a site to check for new content.  Instead, they can receive new content automatically by subscribing to the RSS feed from your blog and read it using any number of widely available software programs as well as websites such as MyYahoo and iGoogle.  This allows people to stay up to date and current with all their favorite content on the web by conveniently organizing it in one place.

Lately, RSS has become very popular and you’ve probably already noticed that more websites have the orange RSS icon displayed somewhere on the page.  This icon provides a direct link to the RSS feed itself and is usually used by readers to signal off-line feed reader software that runs directly on their computer such as RSS bandit that they wish to subscribe or to grab the URL which they can then use to manually subscribe via an online reader.

One way to easily add these icons to your blog is to use FeedBurner which will provide your readers with an easy way of subscribing to your RSS feed and also provide you with information on the number of readers that you have along with other statistics.

The best way to get familiar with RSS is to start using it.  If you already have a Google account or a Yahoo account (either for your e-mail services or anything else that they offer) then you already have access to the RSS readers built-in to MyYahoo and iGoogle.