rss - History and benefits

what is Rss ? History and benefits
Rss mainly called as Really Simple Syndication,its extension is generally .xml and .rss and format is syndication. it is a text-based format, a type of XML format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites,the sites which are frequently updated. RSS files are often labeled as XML.Usually, each item contains a title, summary, and a link to a URL (e.g. a web page). Other information, such as the date, creator’s name, etc., may also be available.
History of RSS ?
Dan libby of netscape at march 1999 had developed the first original version of rss 0.90 to build portals of headlines to mainstreamnews sites.but after it netscape dropped futher development and this made Userland softwares to jump into this field.Userland software made 0.91,0.92,0.93,0.94,2.0 RSS-DEV working group also developed one version Rss 1.0

The abbreviations of RSS is variously used to refer to the following standards:
Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0) Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0) RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0)
how rss feeds help webmasters:
Benefits for the website providing rss feeds:
The website which is providing feed to other websites enjoys the better vistors for their websites as the people who visit the site which is using their website feed will want to know more about the content,if they find it interesting this will increase their website traffic. The second benefit is "links" which they get from the websites which are using their feed,these links are more relevant and are placed between the website pages rather than on links pages,this makes them more important than simple links.search engines like google,yahoo,msn live etc. are also helping webmasters to increase their website traffic by simply adding their atoms andrss feeds in their databses specially made for syndication and make it available for users to use them in their personal pages like my.yahoo,my.msn etc.The more websites uses your feed the more you get links and popularity.
Benefits for the websites using rss feeds:
Rich website content:For webmasters it is becoming more difficult to get good and fresh website content,Really Simple Syndication provides them this facilitythey get matter relevant to their website and site gets automatically fresh rich content which attract their visitors.
Webmasters and users which want to read about latest news or latest updated contents or about anything else can add that rss feed directly to their websites or can read it through various rss readers like google reader,my.yahoo,my.msn pages or use rss agrregators for it.