Today, Reuters released an article titled “Untangle the World Wide Web with RSS” that does a great job of explaining RSS.

RSS (”Really Simple Syndication”) makes keeping up with news easy. You can have all your favorite websites come to you on one simple page - instead of going to each site. You just use RSS feeds. Every “new” item is sent to you immediately.

Only 2 percent of online consumers bother, according to Forrester, and more than half of that group is 40 years old or younger.

For starters, the name is deadly for attracting “average” Internet users — people who use the Web and handle e-mail, but quail at inscrutabilities like “service-oriented architecture” and “robust enterprise solutions.”

Then there are the orange buttons you find on Web pages. Clicking one produces a jumble of computer codes. It’s hardly the path to popularity.

“RSS is a horrible name,” said Li.

People inside and outside the RSS industry realize the technicality of the name. It does not explain what it is at all, nor is it intuitive. But those who use it are true converts. RSS will take off when we all figure out how to make it easy to read and find exactly what you want.

“We want to let people sign up for the news that they want to receive without having to feel like they need a technical background to do it,” she [Ann Marchand Thompson of Washingtonpost.com] said. “They don’t need to know the code behind it.”

Companies like WashingtonPost and the NY Times are all working to make RSS easier to understand and use, and the more companies that adopt this strategy, the more customers will learn about and use RSS, if they aren’t demanding it already.