RSS and Atom are lightweight XML formats for sharing headlines and other Web content.
The heart of an RSS feed is an "item", which can have a title, link, and description.
Item from BBC News:
<item> <title>Heat fuelling California wildfire</title> <description>Firefighters tackling a wildfire north of Los Angeles say they are making slow progress and the blaze remains very dangerous.</description> <link> http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/world/americas/8230540.stm </link> <guid isPermaLink="false">http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8230540.stm </guid> <pubDate>Mon, 31 Aug 2009 20:19:25 GMT</pubDate> <category>Americas</category> <media:thumbnail width="66" height="49" url="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/46297000/jpg/_46297386_007874482-1.jpg"/> </item>