Web feeds are widely used by the weblogcommunity to share the latest entries' headlines or their full text, and even attached multimedia files. Since mid-2000, use of RSS has spread to many of the major news organizations, including Reuters, CNN, PR Newswire, and the BBC. These providers allow other websites to incorporate their "syndicated" headline or headline-and-short-summary feeds under various usage agreements. RSS is now used for many purposes, including marketing, bug-reports, or any other activity involving periodic updates or publications. Many corporations are turning to RSS for delivery of their news, replacing email and fax distribution.

As the mainstream media attempts to realize the full potential of RSS, the new media is utilizing RSS by bypassing traditional news sources. Consumers and journalists are now able to have news constantly fed to them instead of searching for it.

A program known as a feed reader or aggregator can check a list of feeds on behalf of a user and display any updated articles that it finds. It is common to find web feeds on major websites and many smaller ones. Some websites let people choose between RSS or Atomformatted web feeds; others offer only RSS or only Atom.

RSS-aware programs are available for various operating systems (see list of news aggregators). Client-side readers and aggregators are typically constructed as standalone programs or extensions to existing programs such as web browsers. Browsers such as Opera browserand Mozilla Firefoxare moving toward integrated feed reader functions.

Web-based feed readers and news aggregators require no software installation and make the user's "feeds" available on any computer with Web access. Some aggregators combine existing web feeds into new feeds, e.g., taking all football related items from several sports feeds and providing a new football feed. There are also search engines for content published via web feeds like Feedsteror Blogdigger.

On Web pages, web feeds (RSS or Atom) are typically linked with the word "Subscribe" or an orange rectangle, , or with the letters or (although this indicates specifically an RSS feed.)