Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb has written an excellent article on RSS and how big 2007 was for RSS.

Facebook Introduced Millions of People to Syndication

No single event probably came close to the impact of Facebook’s explosion in popularity in terms of popularizing the concept of syndication and feeds. While the application platform is of debatable utility, the News Feed is one of the defining elements of the world’s hottest social network. Almost all other social networks have followed with similar functionality and explaining RSS is now as simple as saying "it’s like the Facebook News Feed."

While Facebook has made explaining RSS easier, personally, I don’t think the masses truly understand what RSS is all about. I don’t think the masses understand what else can be accomplished with RSS outside of Facebook.