

RSS isn't dead it just needs to be repurposed. - screeley
http://blog.embed.ly/rss-isnt-dead-it-just-needs-to-be-repurposed

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trustfundbaby
The problem isn't RSS itself, its shitty RSS readers.

Think about the way RSS feeds are handled by browsersfor a second, because
that's the most likely place a user is going to encounter RSS feeds anyway ...

Google Chrome sends you to Google reader or another RSS reader of your choice
... if you've never messed with RSS, you're going to tap out immediately (what
the heck is an RSS reader?), Firefox adds it to your bookmarks, and you can't
even tell when new items have arrived etc, The RSS feeds in IE are an absolute
joke ... only Opera even gets this remotely right.

Even on Feed Demon which is _by far_ the best RSS reader on the market, the
way it is initially set up, makes consuming content rather awkward unless you
know exactly what you're doing. The View Port is half or a quarter the normal
size of a browser window (until you adjust the reader orientation in the
options), and you're forced to click twice to read content since the actual
article isn't usually shown in the window ... Unless you're a determined user,
you're not going to care very much for all the hoops you have to jump through
to actually read content in an RSS reader ... when you can just keep using a
browser.

That is the problem.

Google reader is nice, but why should I go to a web page to read content that
I could be reading in a browser anyway?

If someone sits down and makes a kick ass RSS reader (feed demon with smart
defaults is pretty much there already), and sells the fact that you can now
read, tag, annotate and bookmark your content as easily as you would with
email ... and like email ... have the ability to get access to all these
bookmarks, notes, read/unread articles regardless of what machine they were on
... I think RSS would get a lot more traction.

So, lets focus less on the technology (how many email readers really care if
they're using IMAP or POP, for example) and just get users a new, smarter way
of consuming content.

I bet there's some money in it even ;)

~~~
tjogin
First, Google Reader is the best RSS reader I've tried. The reason one would
go there when one could be reading the source website in the same browser
instead is because presumably we're subscribing to more than just _one_ RSS
feed. So you go to Google Reader in place of visiting every single website
whose RSS you subscribe to. Isn't that the original problem RSS tried to
solve, anyways?

Second, there are a slew of native clients for Google Reader, all of which
synch up with it. Meaning, you can read your feeds on your smartphone, your
iPad, your computer, your computer at your work, someone else's computer and
everything is just synched. This works great for me, and there are some great
native clients for Google Reader out there.

Third, I don't understand the problem of having too many feeds. It's just a
matter of removing the ones you don't want to read much, or categorize them
into things that you must read, and things for when you are just bored.

I think RSS reading is a tool for pros. It's not for those who just visit a
handful of websites every day, it's for those who are interested in many
_many_ more, and who want to automate the task of finding out what websites
have been updated; not an everyman a tool, it's one for advanced users. It
doesn't matter how simple RSS useage is made, if you don't find the job of
_checking_ your sites for updates tedious and laborious you're not going to
_need_ an RSS reader.

~~~
jokermatt999
_I think RSS reading is a tool for pros. It's not for those who just visit a
handful of websites every day, it's for those who are interested in many many
more, and who want to automate the task of finding out what websites have been
updated; not an everyman a tool, it's one for advanced users. It doesn't
matter how simple RSS useage is made, if you don't find the job of checking
your sites for updates tedious and laborious you're not going to need an RSS
reader._

I agree with most of your post, but I think this is somewhat off. It's less to
do with pro/casual than the style of content consumption. Say Mrs Housewife
usually just browses the front page of Yahoo. She doesn't need an RSS feed for
that; she's fine with missing items. In fact, keeping up with all the content
would probably be tiring.

But then her friend Mrs Awesomecook starts a great blog sharing her recipes.
Mrs Housewife wants to try each one, but Mrs Awesomecook only seems to update
once or twice every week.

 _This is when you want RSS_. She wants to see every single item, but checking
the site can become a chore. It's annoying to check this and her other
friends' blogs when there's nothing new, but she also wants to see all of the
new stuff and in a timely manner. By subscribing to an RSS feed, she can make
this easier.

I think part of the problem is that Mrs Housewife has no idea what an RSS feed
or reader is, much less what it's useful for. Furthermore, to learn a new
technology like that, she'd have to see a benefit worth taking the trouble
for, which usually has to be pretty high for non-technical users.

Edit: And apologies if my examples seem prejudiced/sexist, it was just the
first thing that came to mind since it's somewhat similar to why I taught my
mom to use Google Reader (which she now loves).

------
stevenp
On the substance of the article, it's not "repurposing" RSS to use it in ways
beyond traditional feed readers. RSS has always been an open syndication
format, and still has plenty of uses.

On to less productive comments...

RSS may not be dead, but punctuation apparently is. I thought there was a typo
in the post on HN, but it turns out that this little run-on headline is in the
actual post. The rest of the post is even worse grammatically.

Hey guys, if you're going to write on your company's blog, invest in a bit of
proofreading. Bad posts reflect negatively on not only you, but your startup
also.

~~~
Groxx
I wonder if they've rewritten it somewhat; the headline now has a comma, and
most of the post isn't too far from being entirely grammatically correct. It's
closer to conversational English than many blog posts, but that's no crime
against language.

They _could_ use a few semicolons in place of some of those periods, though;
especially where it starts to get period-heavy near the end.

~~~
teaspoon
While we're on the topic, you shouldn't have a semicolon in that last
sentence; the right side is not an independent clause.

------
jerf
You can't call it "repurposing" when you're using it for its designed purpose!
RSS readers from day one have only ever been one aspect of the larger
ecosystem around the format.

~~~
doki_pen
I wasn't around then, but I'll take your word for it. In any case, the main
point remains valid. We may see the decline of RSS readers, but RSS is alive
and well.

~~~
geoffw8
If you don't know enough about a subject, you shouldn't write about it. Or at
least do some research.

P.s. looks like you could have put your point in a tweet :)

------
iwwr
RSS is not dead, there simply is no good alternative to it. The only other
programmatic ways of to getting updates from a website are either e-mail or
HTML screen scraping.

~~~
turbodog
If you assumed that the label "RSS", included RSS of various flavors, Atom and
PubSubHubHub, how would you describe a good alternative to that?

My assumption is debatable for sure, but I'd like to hear what folks think is
lacking.

~~~
roc
The use model.

Twitter works for many more people because there is One Place for those data
streams. CNN, Comcast, Oprah they're all at and on "Twitter". If you want to
subscribe to a Twitter stream there's a clear and unambiguous way to 'hook in'
and the data stream is of a consistent form.

RSS, on the other hand, involves hunting about pages looking for feed streams
that may not exist, possibly installing plugins to simplify the process of
adding those streams (once found), getting a reader, having no idea what type
of information you'll be getting back [1], nor the form of the posts [2], nor
having any consistent method of feed interaction [3] and no easy way to
delegate your list of sources to one or many friends who will then curate the
source news for you.

Basically, RSS allows specific readers to suck, it allows specific feeds to
suck and it allows the whole experience to suck. Twitter isn't the best, but
the whole thing is easy-to-use, consistent and dependable. Similarly with the
'like' functionality of Facebook.

[1] filtered list of content? way more than you wanted? old? buggy and re-
spamming you with old stories? buggy skipping stories?

[2] full content? abbreviation? uselessly-short abbreviation? sane links for
sharing? short links? ads? obtrusive ads? poor formatting?

[3] Do I click the RSS headline to see the full post? The link the post
referred to? Some lame on-site redisplay of what was already in my reader,
because I was expected to click some image button in the summary?

~~~
kennu
Strange, I kind of feel the opposite way about Twitter.

I can paste any website's URL to Google Reader to subscribe to that site's RSS
feed.

What kind of a standard way is there to find out the Twitter feed of a random
website or blog I happen to run across and want to follow? Do I search for the
author's name on Twitter? Can I be sure I get all the posts and not some other
crap he's tweeting?

~~~
roc
Sure, it's potentially as tricky to find a twitter stream from a website, as
to find an RSS feed. But that's not the primary use model. And where there is
a twitter icon, the one-click-follow is a universal secondary use that
requires no clients or third party services.

The primary use for Twitter is to find feeds directly on Twitter. Either by
searching or by seeing who your friends follow. Which is what most people do.
They sort through what their friends follow and pick and choose from that.
Adding a few additional feeds here and there, but those being the minority.

That's what Google Reader's social widgets were trying to replicate. That's
what Buzz was trying to replicate. Discovering feeds from friends. Because
most users don't discover new sources for themselves.

------
kahirsch
> For many people, like me, Twitter has replaced most of the functionality of
> a reader. I still get the same information, but it's pushed to me, nicely
> curated, by people I follow.

I'm completely baffled by comments like this. I've tried subscribing to feeds
that have just headlines or headline and one sentence and I end up never
reading them. Almost all the feeds I read have full text and the rest have at
least 100 _words_ of the content per post, not 140 characters, so I can tell
if it's worth clicking on.

Sites like reddit (or HN) which have voting and a decent commenting system add
value, but Twitter? I'm actually turned off when I read some thoughtful blog
post somewhere and at the end it says "if you liked this, follow me on
Twitter." Yeah, thanks, but no, I must have mistaken you for someone who could
form complete sentences.

------
andrewescott
And RSS readers don't naturally hook into the underlying comment systems on
the content they present, so if you want to read/write comments, you need to
click through anyway.

It's okay for consuming newspaper articles that don't support comments, but
frustrating for blogs where you want to be part of the conversation.

------
aberkowitz
RSS sucks because it's the bastard child of long content and short content.

Until publishers can figure out how to write for medium length content, it
will be tucked away for use by self professed nerds who like to access and
manipulate information quickly.

------
PCapone
new purpose for RSS and cause for last weekend's project:

<http://www.pclapper.com/GetRandomRssSummary/>

