

Twitter And Facebook Really Are Killing RSS  - jasonlbaptiste
http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/03/techcrunch-twitter-facebook-rss/

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jasonlbaptiste
Memes like this bother me ala the whole declaring things dead. The problem of
subscribing to content still exists. It always will.

When RSS came along did that kill email newsletters or email subscriptions to
content? No. RSS was just another solution to that problem. Twitter, FB,
social,etc. is just another solution to the problem, it doesn't mean it kills
RSS.

Is RSS used less now? Yup, but that doesn't mean it's dead. RSS has become a
background technology. I haven't clicked the subscribe to RSS feed orange
thingy in a while. I do use Pulse and get updates from key sites there. I bet
that uses RSS to get the content. That's fine, that's probably how RSS should
be used. Now everyone wins.

If we're talking about direct syndication and subscription and not
complementary tech ala fb/twitter, then I don't see anything killing it
currently.

Until the problem is no longer there, it's hard to say a technology ala
solution to that problem is "dead".

~~~
greyman
I think this is only a terminology problem. In tech press, "A killed B" means
that B is used less now, is not that cool anymore, etc. It doesn't mean that B
is dead or is going to completely disappear. So in this light, I think the TC
article is spot on.

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richardw
Maybe it means that many readers don't want to read every article that TC puts
out, so don't subscribe to the RSS. When there's an interesting article
forwarded from a friend, they go and read it.

Personally I love Reader. I use it for high signal-to-noise writers only,
where I want to read (or be aware of) almost everything they write. I
regularly remove blogs who feel they need to put something out every hour,
just because.

~~~
phirephly
This. Not every article from who-n-who's blog is going to be posted on HN, or
hit the front page of Reddit, or be shared on Facebook. Somebody does actually
have to subscribe to blogs they like and read it, somewhere. It can't be
aggregation all the way down. RSS is probably too complicated for normal
people (being named something as pointless and confusing as "Real Simple
Syndication" doesn't help).

I can see how some people might be able to get by, but when I'm one of maybe
100 people subscribed to a blog, I'm not going to see it drift by on FB.

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netmau5
I very rarely click through Reader to view the underlying post and I never
stay subscribed to blogs that don't push their entire post through RSS. I
don't have a problem with ads and the smart ones will embed them anyway. I
just find it more convenient to read everything from a centralized setting. I
like to avoid opening superfluous tabs on my crappy windows machine at work if
I can help it, it needs all the free memory it can get just to stay unfrozen.

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younata
I dislike google reader. I prefer native clients which cache the content I
read. Currently, I use newsfire (mac) [1], before I was using newsbeuter
(command line). Yes, I am aware that you can technically switch reader to an
"offline mode". It just isn't the same as a native client with cached content.

Maybe the trend has been away from using google reader, and towards using
native rss clients.

[1] <http://www.newsfirerss.com/> [2] <http://newsbeuter.org/>

~~~
mburns
> It just isn't the same as a native client with cached content.

It is exactly the same. It just 'feels' different because your mental model
doesn't connect the same dots.

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jonburs
TC is one of the now-days rare RSS feeds that includes the full article
content; because of this I rarely have any need to click through to the full
article.

~~~
robotron
This. I read this entire RSS Is Dead article in Google Reader, never clicking
through. With a Twitter or Facebook post, you don't have a choice but to click
through in order to read it. Of course this is going to skew the stats.

------
ThomPete
Technology don't die it just re-emerges in other shapes.

The problem with these kind of discussions are that they confuse the product
with the technology.

The real discussion they seem to be having is whether open is better than
closed and we all know where that kind of discussion leads.

------
amanuel
RSS is dying from its overuse (too many blogs) and misuse (spam and pointless
feeds).

Also the lack of innovation from RSS reader apps isn't helping.

------
cookiecaper
Of course it is -- Facebook and Twitter are nothing but aggregators for the
masses, aggregating information that the masses care about in a centralized,
simple way. The user doesn't have to download a reader, look around for an RSS
button, copy the URL to an XML file, or anything like that; he just has to
click "Follow" or "Add Friend".

Facebook and Twitter are not new concepts -- they are aggregators for their
consumers and publishing platforms for their producers, and your mom uses
Facebook or Twitter to follow the things she cares about for the same reason
you use RSS to follow the technical blogs you care about.

