Atom is technically superior to RSS, yet many still use RSS out of ignorance or indifference. Atom’s formal XML structure eliminates ambiguities that plague RSS, especially in title encoding where special characters or markup can break feeds.

Unlike RSS, which offers no clear encoding semantics, Atom defines *text constructs*—text, HTML, or XHTML—allowing titles to include markup safely. This removes the need for ad‑hoc workarounds that RSS readers often employ.

Podcasting illustrates Atom’s shortcomings: because major players like Apple and the iTunes ecosystem historically supported only RSS, many podcast feeds remain RSS‑centric. Even though RFC 4287 formalized Atom, the ecosystem’s early lock‑in has limited its adoption.

Overall, Atom’s clarity and consistency make it the better choice for reliable feed delivery, especially when advanced metadata or markup in titles is required.