
Can someone please explain why some people don't like RSS feeds? - ericleeclark
Years ago I started using RSS to consume content and stay on top of what's going on. Today I find that there are still an unbelievable amount of people who don't understand the concept of pulling in content to a place like Google Reader as opposed to individually visiting sites (I'm talking about people outside of our techie world). I mean, RSS isn't THAT complicated, right? Then I hear spats about "RSS is dying" or "RSS is a thing of the past"... Really? I think RSS is one of the best things since sliced bread. I don't think social will overtake the need for RSS, so I'm just not quite sure I understand the nay-sayers. Care to chime in?
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Concours
Disclosure: I run <http://www.feedsapi.com> , a service that makes RSS a must-
have .

I don't think RSS is dying and I also don't think people don't like it, it's
just a complex technology for the average Joe to use, so let me try to
elaborate. You need an RSS reader to use RSS, a techguy can just move on
download rssowl, rssbandit...etc or use google reader, the average Joe has
never heard of RSS bandit, has no clue how no clue how to use RSS on a
computer and needing to download a new software or signup to another service
to take advantage of RSS is another entry barrier for many people, so that's
actually the main problem IMHO. Of course you have many publications with a
crap user experience on their RSS full of Ads and truncated feeds ( I run a
service <http://www.feedsapi.com> that fix both issues) , butnthere are many
services to fix that.

In contrast, the entry barrier for rss on smartphone is very low, users
download an RSS reader and they are ready to go. I mean, flipboard, Sparse RSS
Pro, Pulse, Reeder...etc, are nothing else than RSS readers and they are very
popular on all platforms ( android, iOs, windowsphone....) and the average joe
tend to love them as well, so I think RSS just need more time to fully reach
the average Joe. Social Media is no replacement for RSS, I don't get why
people tend to compare both, it feels like comparing oranges to apples.

P.S. sorry for my english, not a native speaker.

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fluxon
I like RSS, and my usage has gradually expanded over the years. But I can see
several reasons for slowed uptake: I haven't seen new coverage of RSS such as
"It's fun and easy to use RSS to collect your favorite blogs and episodic
media in one place" articles for _years_ , so it's likely very much out of the
non-technical public's eye. It has become a set-and-forget commodity for media
consumers who do know about it (but who don't proselytize). Getting started
requires a bit of tedium - finding a decent client, copy/pasting URLs, or
getting a browser to properly fire up that client to subscribe. Even finding
the RSS icon/link on many content websites has become annoyingly difficult.
And no blogs, podcasts or vlogs even _mention_ "Subscribe to our RSS feed"
anymore, only facebook, twitter, and maybe their website URL.

(Though I see its value for text, Google Reader (web) is weak for non-text
media: it's off the main Google menubar, has no auto download, and so acts
merely as a hidden, online-only index to updated content. I highly value
downloading for reading/playback offline (or frequent 0-bars situations).)

A chunk of RSS's potential userbase just gravitates to what they use every
day: Twitter, since "feeds" work much the same, with the addition of comments
and a promotion mechanism (retweet or not).

Just thinking aloud.

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Crunchy
I think some people just dont understand em. Or the concept of feeds. Maybe
cuz Apple didn't"invent" it :p Some people are convinced that you dont get
full stories or images etc, which I guess can be be true but seems rarer these
days. I like to browse the headers & then if I still need to visit the site I
can. Saves so much time wasting surfing each site when you consume many!

~~~
mooism2
And yet some people who can't get to grips with the idea of feeds happily
signup to e-mail lists that promise "an e-mail every time I post to the site".
It seems odd.

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Crunchy
I know!? It IS odd. Such a simple concept that gets seemingly butchered with
ignorance.

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shyn3
RSS doesn't get any love from companies who use it. They never advertise it.

I think it stems from the following:

1) People want full-text feeds including images, video, and audio. Companies
try to get the user to come to their site so there isn't an incentive to
advertise this option if you are using full-text whereas if you aren't you
probably don't have as many users subscribing.

2) Sometimes you can't tell how many people are coming from a certain feed
from a certain source. If you have full-page feeds and someone is using a web-
based service that stores the feeds instead of querying for each user the
website may never know that an article was read.

I think there needs to be a way to measure feed reach in order to increase
adoption for such an awesome technology.

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Toph
I love RSS... But I hate the sheer volume of noise and repetitive shit that
gets rehashed over and over again across numerous feeds. I subscribe to a
large variety of topics too, not just startups and technical news. It happens
in every group and the VOLUME of repetitive crap is annoying to deal with.

Social media, when properly set and curated, have been slightly better at
filtering some of the noise (albeit there are some repetition) but then lacks
the volume of good stuff that RSS goes over that is being missed.

I need a solution in between.

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georgemcbay
RSS would be fantastic but the vast majority of sites that still bother to
offer it gimp the crap out of their RSS feeds for advertising purposes (eg.
RSS feed only gives tiny snippets of the full content and a link to the site
so you'll click through and they'll get advertising views), making it
basically worthless.

~~~
saurik
Many things would be fantastic if they didn't have a fatal flaw; for RSS, it
is that the mechanism, while something no one seems willing to pay for (a la
$1/month to subscribe via RSS), is designed to undermine the only monetization
model content producers normally can manage.

~~~
whichdan
I wonder if anyone's tried tackling an "RSS feed store" the same way app
stores work? Being able to easily add and remove $1/mo subscriptions would be
quite nice, especially with a $10/yr option.

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majani
People love the concept behind RSS. They just want it served in an easily
digestible way, which is: social media.

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bluestix
I love RSS.

I like it so much I built an RSS search engine.

<http://rssident.com>

It's still a work in progress but I will be adding several new features soon.

For any of you that need jobs this is an easy way to find them:

[http://rssident.com/mash/?t=job&e=java](http://rssident.com/mash/?t=job&e=java)

[http://rssident.com/mash/?t=job&e=ruby](http://rssident.com/mash/?t=job&e=ruby)

[http://rssident.com/mash/?t=job&e=php](http://rssident.com/mash/?t=job&e=php)

Or by individual feed:

[http://rssident.com/feeds/?t=job&e=java](http://rssident.com/feeds/?t=job&e=java)

Right now it's only indexing feeds I added but soon anyone will able to add
whatever feeds they want.

