The difference between RSS and Atom
For a while, I was confused as to what the difference between RSS and Atom were when I would sign up for a web feed. Some websites offer users a choice in formatting. A web feed, which is sometimes mistakenly referred to as simply “RSS”, is a standardized method used to syndicate web content. Different services can aggregate many of these feeds. A desktop app like NetNewsWire and web-based services like iGoogle, Bloglines, Google Reader, and Netvibes are common feed aggregators.
Essentially, RSS is the “original” family of web feeds developed throughout the early 00s with the Atom specification being the “fresh face”, offering even more clarity around things like content types and date formatting. So really, there’s no difference that you should be concerned about. Many big sites will only offer their content through RSS 2.0 but Atom is technically the “better” solution going forward.
Credit to the web feed Wikipedia page for relaying most of this pretty useless information.
