RSS stand for Really Simple Syndication and it was devised as a method for people to receive feeds of news automatically into a Feed Reader via a subscription.
RSS Icons for Your RSS Feed
Feed Readers are built into browsers or are free-standing software apps that receive any RSS feed to which you subscribe, whenever the publisher posts news. To eliminate design conflicts, the feeds themselves must be stripped of all formatting, so that each website or feed reader that receives and republishes the feed can render its contents in its own inherent design style rather than a design forced by the feed source.
The social icon for RSS is a default web standard to access an RSS feed for the content of site, so you can add it to your list of subscriptions that are automatically pulled into your reader or web page. The original model for Twitter readers like TweetDeck are similar to the RSS concept, because following someone on Twitter is nothing more than subscribing to automatically receive a stripped-down limited-length feed.
Perhaps if the folks who invented RSS had called their feeds something cute like tweets, they would be billionaires – though they very well may be without me knowing it.
Therefore, if you offer something other than an RSS feed as the landing page for your RSS icon link, then you are violating the default standards of the web and you are deceiving and denying your viewers who want to subscribe to your feed.
I would recommend removing an RSS icon ahead of setting it a s false and deceptive link. Anyone who knowingly clicks an RSS icon expects to land on a feed page. Those who do not know will eventually understand to not click those icons, because they offer nothing of value to them (or they’ll learn to use them).
It would be unfair to deny those who expect and want your feed from easy access to it via an RSS icon in the web social icon section of your site, which has become another default web standard – but that topic is for another day.
Many options exist, but the bottom line is that software has always become outdated the moment you install it, so a system that eliminates that aspect and let’s you focus on running the business makes sense, especially if it cuts down site development time and dependence on an individual person.
