Wired: Will RSS Readers Clog the Web?
Some sites are starting to worry that the Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds that they make available to users might cause technical headaches as the news aggregators used to read the many sites all at once wind up downloading the content many times a day, seeking updates and changes. Said one blogger, "Once all the covered wagons show up and an RSS reader is folded into Microsoft's Internet Explorer or Outlook, we're doomed."
Newsreader programs are supposed to get around this by seeking information as to when the site was last updated, but many programs fail to implement this feature correctly, or use the local computer's clock to determine the time. Some readers simply look up all the sites every half hour.
