

RSS not dead, just misunderstood - Swizec
http://swizec.com/blog/rss-not-dead-just-misunderstood/swizec/1454

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danparsonson
This whole 'death of RSS readers' thing is a real surprise to me - I connect
to Bloglines every morning with my mobile (the browser is a bit pants, and
Bloglines works better for me than Google Reader), and read interesting stuff
on the train to work. When I find a blog post I enjoy on a site like HN, I add
the blog to my blog-roll to sample future posts.

I find an aggregated set of articles all on one page much easier to consume,
particularly when I'm going in and out of tunnels and losing signal - for that
reason Twitter is of limited use to me since I'd have to repeatedly navigate
links - not to mention the reduced load time and required number of clicks due
to having the text all in one place.

Am I part of a dying breed? I thought mine was a fairly common scenario, at
least among techies - talk about not looking outside my own four walls!

~~~
bmelton
Perhaps you missed the articles where Bloglines is shutting their doors?

I agree, I don't think that the technology is going anywhere, as it's pretty
much saturated with support on almost every blog / publishing platform, etc. I
think that the idea of an 'RSS Reader' is dying might hold more weight, as
there are a number of issues with RSS that nobody is really working to tackle
(that I know of -- I personally am, but that's another conversation.)

You may consider switching to Google Reader in the interim, as I don't think
it's going anywhere.

~~~
danparsonson
Sadly I saw that today too :-( As it happens, I have been thinking about
developing a simple RSS reader for mobiles (my favourite bits of Bloglines +
my favourite bits of Google Reader written to support the 'old skool'
Blackberry browser) for a few months, so Bloglines' death gives me a kick to
get started. If nothing else, it'll be an interesting little side project.

~~~
cema
Sounds good.

Which features ("bits"), btw?

~~~
danparsonson
I like Google Reader's option to mark articles with a star to be revisited
later, and the ease of adding new feeds in the full client; from Bloglines, I
like the fact that it puts all new articles in one page - minimal UI
interaction, and I don't need to keep a connection up.

One area I'm hoping to improve on both is the speed - both Bloglines and
Google Reader, on the Blackberry at least, are a bit cumbersome and need
several clicks before you actually get to read anything. Another thing I'd
like to do better is that (with Bloglines) a failed page load still marks all
new articles as 'read' - this does happen occasionally when I'm on the move,
and I end up missing the latest articles.

I have one or two other ideas to experiment with :-)

~~~
cema
Thanks!

~~~
danparsonson
I imagine you won't see this now, but just in case - the first version is now
up, at <http://dambr.com>

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ZeroMinx
Who's been saying RSS is dead? For me, it's been the main way to get news/web
updates for years.

~~~
ugh
I always saw RSS as this dorky tool no one else uses that helps me to
efficiently read what I want to read on the web. I don’t care at all how
popular it is as long as the websites I want to read have a RSS feed.

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beaumartinez
_Someone make an RSS reader for people._ I think that's a good point; I've got
too many subscriptions in my Google Reader, so many that I rarely access it: I
feel overwhelmed.

I think there was a discussion on this in HN somewhere a week ago; someone
suggested News Blur and it seemed a good solution although I haven't tried it
out yet. <http://www.newsblur.com/>

~~~
steveklabnik
Yep, I love RSS, but I don't ever read my feeds. Every feed reader in
existence sucks. Fever sounds interesting, but I'm not going to fork over $30
for 'sounds interesting.'

I'm not sure if this is an inherent problem, or if it's just that everyone's
scared of Google Reader, and RSS doesn't seem sexy anymore.

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gnaar
The problem with fast food is not the food, it's the way people use it. Once
in a while - no problem. Every day - big problems.

The problem with RSS is not RSS, it's the way people use it. Add a few sites
whose content is enough interest to you that you read everything they publish
- RSS is awesome. Add every site you come across that _might_ produce
something you're interested in between stuff you don't care about - big
problem. You've invented yourself a new daily chore, and, worse still, you
think you've done yourself a favour by doing it.

Same with twitter, too. Follow crap-spouters and you'll think that twitter is
nothing more than the what-I-had-for-lunch stereotype. Follow people who 'get
it', and you'll be annoyed at that stereotype.

~~~
danparsonson
The same applies to any news source though, doesn't it? Newspapers, TV,
HN/name your favourite news site - all will have articles you don't want to
read, mixed with those you do. To me, it doesn't seem like that much of a
chore to skim through and pick out what's interesting to me, and an RSS
aggregator acts as a prefilter, further reducing your search space.

I guess what you're looking for is something with some level of intelligence
as to what you're likely to be interested in reading. Maybe that's the next
step in the evolution of RSS aggregators - software that takes an RSS feed and
filters it based on learned preferences? On the other hand, sticking purely to
'what you like' could lead to a sort of tunnel-vision where you miss the odd
random article that captures your imagination but lies outside your normal
tastes. That is, of course, a problem with aggregators in general, and is one
reason why I keep reading HN and don't just stick to my RSS feeds.

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xtho
How would a rss reader for people look like? Would it be able to rate/rank
items accordingly to the probability that I'm going to like it?

The main problem with rss feeds is the same as with many other media formats:
people try to meet the standard volume (at least x posts per week) even if
they have nothing interesting to say. Most rss feeds suffer from the same
problem that also hampers novels that have to be X pages long, movies that
have to be 100 minutes long, or CDs that have to have a minimum play time etc.
even though the quality of the material would suggest something shorter.

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ax0n
It's really funny how I came across all of the "RSS is dead" stuff in Google
Reader.

Then I see people saying "I just use $PLATFORM to stay current" where
$PLATFORM is Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed or any of a litany of other half-
baked websites that don't easily track what you've looked at, nor are they
capable of easily categorizing or prioritizing the influx of digital jetsam
and flotsam.

Sorry, folks. I don't have time to grok a single website all day long while
crap rolls in. I want to be able to sit down at my lunch break, get a glance
at what's happened since my morning coffee, and get on with my day.

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marknutter
I've always said that Twitter brought RSS to the masses. Try explaining RSS to
any non-technical person and watch their eyes gloss over. Twitter is fast
becoming a source of news - you "subscribe" to people's Twitter accounts and
get interesting links and thoughts pushed to your Twitter account and favorite
Twitter client. Couldn't be more simple. Parsing links from Twitter and
Facebook is going to become the next big thing (and something my startup is
has been focused on for the last year, too).

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tingley
RSS is not dead, but as a technology it is fairly stagnant. There were a solid
five years when little was accomplished other than repeated version forks
based on the dumbest sort of squabbling imaginable.

I don't think it's dead, because at this point it does solve a problem
reasonably well, and it's still a problem many people are interested in
solutions to.

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westi
Feed Readers are like mailing lists. You have to scan the subjects and decide
if you want to dive in. You don't have to read everything from everyone you
subscribe to. Also Hacker News is for me a feed reader - I benefit from
everyone else picking out good stuff for me to read and then I subscribe to
that with RSS.

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mike-cardwell
I use rss2email to gate my various RSS feeds into a single folder in my email
account. I then read them using Thunderbird and IMAP.

I don't like the idea of a dedicated RSS reader. I'd much rather import it
into an application which I already use. Email is perfect for that.

~~~
carussell
You realize Thunderbird supports feeds, right?

~~~
mike-cardwell
Yes, but I also use Mutt, and my phones email client, and I have several
installations of Thunderbird on different machines. Gating to email makes much
more sense.

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sports_guy
I run a sports news aggregation site. Before RSS existed it was very difficult
to manage all of my sources because they would change so often. I now
aggregate several thousand sources by myself and this wouldn't be doable
without RSS.

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emehrkay
Funny, I dont use twitter (I like it though) or facebook, but just started
aggregating rss feeds to my mail inbox.

