Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Is RSS dead?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 211 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is RSS dead?

#41

Post by pjlegato »

jasode wrote: post #19

By asking the question using the word "dead"[0] which has such offensive connotations, it will spur some to say "it's not dead" -- which isn't really going to be productive for what I think you're really asking. First, in one sense (but doesn't really answer your question) ... the old protocols like RSS (feeds), NNTP (news), IRC (chat), etc are never going to be "dead" because somebody somewhere will always be provid…

The word "dead" is hardly offensive. It's a common and universal part of nature. All things eventually die, including software.

Re: Ask HN: Is RSS dead?

#42

Post by robobro »

It takes like 20 seconds to add an Rss feed to whatever feed generator software you've been writing. For the love of God please take those 20 seconds to help people like us！

Re: Ask HN: Is RSS dead?

#43

Post by robobro »

scarface74 wrote: post #29
thinkingkong wrote: post #10

RSS the protocol, or RSS the experience? The Protocol is alive and kicking, as far as being available, but it's been more or less killed by publishers not promoting it out of the box. AFAIK ad revenue is basically the reason. The replacement set of broadcast tools is still Facebook, Twitter, Direct, and Newsletters. Newsletters are really the new feed.

I have yet to find a website that I feel should have an RSS feed that doesn’t have one.

Twitter

Re: Ask HN: Is RSS dead?

#45

Post by reggieband »

jasode wrote: post #19

By asking the question using the word "dead"[0] which has such offensive connotations, it will spur some to say "it's not dead" -- which isn't really going to be productive for what I think you're really asking. First, in one sense (but doesn't really answer your question) ... the old protocols like RSS (feeds), NNTP (news), IRC (chat), etc are never going to be "dead" because somebody somewhere will always be provid…

RSS does play a growing role in a few places: podcasts [1] and virtual assistant apps (e.g. Alexa [2], Google Home[3], etc.) Although in both cases consumers do not tend to have direct access to it.

1. https://itunespartner.apple.com/podcasts/articles/creating-y...

2. https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/flashbriefing/...

3. https://developers.google.com/news/assistant/newsbriefings/t...

Re: Ask HN: Is RSS dead?

#46

Post by slg »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #23

> Is RSS Dead Have you heard of podcasts? They're booming and they rely on RSS. The way they're subscribed to and the way they're submitted to large platforms is via their RSS feeds.

The podcast industry might be booming, but the days of nearly every podcast being freely available with an RSS feed is certainly over. Granted this is mostly a business decision rather than a technical decision. Companies like Spotify want you to listen to their podcasts on their platform. This allows them to better track ad statistics and push other revenue streams compared to podcasts served over traditional RSS feeds.

Re: Ask HN: Is RSS dead?

#47

Post by Thorentis »

To the average consumer: yes. Why? Almost all news sites, blogs, journalists, etc. use Facebook pages and other social media as "RSS feeds" for their own websites. When people "like" a Facebook page or "follow" a Twitter account, they are basically adding that outlet to their RSS feed. And when they scroll through Facebook or Twitter, they are consuming that feed.

Social media has replaced RSS feeds for the vast majority of people. They tailor their feed by choosing who to follow and which pages to like, and the writers / media producers ensure that new content is automatically cross posted to their social media accounts so that it appears in people's feeds.

For tech people / people that read more niche sites, RSS is useful, but RSS will never become mainstream or widely adopted given the already widespread adoption of other Internet feeds such as social media platforms.

Re: Ask HN: Is RSS dead?

#49

Post by jbob2000 »

eropple wrote: post #38
jbob2000 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is using the word “dead” offensive?

"Unproductive for discussion", then. Calling RSS "dead" will offend people who are partial to it, because there are fanboys everywhere, and that's not going to lead to a particularly useful discussion.

No it won’t, the title asked a question, it didn’t make a matter-of-fact statement.

If you aren’t personally offended by the term, i would argue that it’s unproductive to claim that someone somewhere else under different conditions would get offended.

And besides - we’re talking about a technological standard, not someone’s grandmother. On my give-a-fuck scale, a person being offended by their favourite technology standard being called “dead” is somewhere between a rat’s ass and Donald trump’s morning dump.

Post reply on HN