Guides
What web feeds are, how they work, and what you can do with them once workers start processing them for you.
What can you do with feeds?
Feeds are used for much more than reading blogs. Here's how different industries use feed.works.
News Monitoring→
Track breaking news across hundreds of sources without refreshing browser tabs.
For: Newsrooms, PR teams, executive briefing staff
Brand Monitoring→
Subscribe to feeds that mention your brand and score sentiment on every mention.
For: Marketing teams, comms leads, founders
Competitor Monitoring→
Follow competitor blogs, changelogs, and job postings as feeds.
For: Product managers, strategy teams, investor analysts
Legal & IP Monitoring→
Subscribe to USPTO, SEC EDGAR, and court docket trackers. Workers isolate claims and flag filings.
For: IP counsel, corporate legal, patent portfolio managers, tech transfer offices
Social Media Aggregation→
Aggregate Mastodon, BlueSky, Reddit, and YouTube feeds alongside blogs and podcasts.
For: Community managers, social listening teams, anyone tired of checking 6 apps
Energy Market News→
Follow weather observations and flag conditions that affect generation before the market prices them in.
For: Energy traders, grid operators, renewable asset managers, parametric insurance underwriters
Financial News & Filings→
Subscribe to SEC EDGAR and earnings wires. Entity Extraction pulls material events.
For: Buy-side analysts, compliance teams, quantitative funds, investor relations
Portfolio Monitoring→
Build a feed bundle that tracks every company in your portfolio.
For: Asset managers, venture investors, board members
Cyber Risk Monitoring→
Subscribe to CVE feeds, vendor advisories, and CERT bulletins. Flag critical vulnerabilities in your stack.
For: SOC teams, vulnerability management, CISOs, compliance auditors
Regulatory Monitoring→
Follow Federal Register feeds and regulatory announcements. Workers flag proposed rules before comment periods close.
For: Compliance teams, government affairs, regulated industries (healthcare, finance, energy, telecom)
AI Chats on Podcast Episodes→
Chat with an AI agent about any podcast episode you've listened to. Ask questions, get quotes, explore tangents.
For: Podcast listeners, researchers, students, anyone who wants to go deeper on an episode
International Relations→
Subscribe to podcasts and news in languages you don't speak. Hear what other countries think about yours.
For: Diplomats, foreign correspondents, policy analysts, global affairs students, curious citizens
What is a Web Feed?
You can make a document in a .pdf, .docx, or .pages each file might have basically the same data. Web feeds work the same way. There are at least three flavors: RSS, Atom, and JSONFeed. While knowing their specifics is not needed at all to use feed.works, knowing what they do is useful: a web feed summarizes the most recent changes to a website in a format any software like feed.works can read.
When a blog publishes a new post, the feed updates. When a podcast releases a new episode, the feed updates. When a government agency posts a new filing, the feed updates. When the National Weather Service updates forcasts, the feed updates. Your podcast app, or other "reader app" checks those feeds periodically and shows you what's new — no algorithm, no login, no tracking.
RSS
The original (late 1990s). XML-based. Every podcast app and news aggregator in the world reads it. When someone says "subscribe to my feed," they almost always mean RSS.
Atom
A more rigorous XML alternative (mid-2000s). Fixes ambiguities in RSS. Most readers handle both identically — you rarely need to know which one a site publishes.
JSONFeed
The newest format (2017). JSON instead of XML. Also the format feed.works extends with _worker fields when workers process your content.
You don't need to pick one. feed.works reads all knows how to get the data within each of them.