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It's time to head back to RSS?

wired.com

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Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#33
Hello founder of Panda here, you can use http://usepanda.com to read RSS as well. Right now you can add maximum 3 RSS feeds for free. With pro account you can add unlimited feeds. (It's as low as $2.99 per month) We're planning to start a Patreon campaign and our goal is to make all the premium features free for all the users as we reach our goals on the platform. As soon as we reach $2000 we'll make RSS feeds free for everyone. Hope you guys give it a try :)

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#35
Hey Wired, maybe RSS would be more popular if media outlets like you would put more in your RSS feeds than a title and single sentence for each article.

But I get it. You need ads to make money, and just putting ads in your RSS feed is not enough because they're not "interactive" enough, or something. You need those "engagement" metrics that you generate by making readers press a button to read the full article.

I was trying and fell short of something witty to say. Just, wow, this is a sorry state of affairs. Just give me the damn content and I'll be on my merry way.

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#36
I've been using the same method for about 16 years thanks to Firefox. RSS toolbar feeds[0] have been supported since Firefox was in beta (Phoenix). I never did use Google Reader, I viewed that as for the kids! Came and went and I never paid any attention to it, didn't need it and I waited out its existence apparently.

RSS toolbar feeds are also the reason I never switched to Chrome, ever. Google never wanted anyone to have ad-free RSS feeds catch on when they could potentially prevent a site visit.

For my iOS solution, I use Feedly by simply subscribing to the same sources as I do in Firefox. Not much else is necessary. Other than picking up Feedly for mobile, same tool all this time.

[0]https://i.imgur.com/6LTAie1.png

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#37
post #21

I just remember the overwhelm: opening up Google Reader and forgetting what I went there to do because there were so many unread things. I don’t think this is endemic to a protocol, but the social filter on top of content is how I find most of the things that I find useful and interesting today.

Yes. This might be a problem with software implementations but it's the reason why I don't use rss anymore. The anxiety caused by "There's 500000 unread items in your feeds"

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#39
I always felt RSS/ATOM were underrated,

So in 2015 for the love of RSS and information consumption we set out to build a completely customisable news aggregator app with fast parsing (RSS/ATOM), category selection, reorder categories, notification customisation -(schedule, DND), image toggle, data saving mode, filter, youtube, sharing news with own voice attached called Talk about News - https://talkabout.co.in/

Sharing news along with voice was the USP, so that the shared content gets more value. While working on this, we saw that not every site followed RSS/ATOM standards we had to individually handle different sites for the shortcomings. I'm certain that, though Feedly started as RSS aggregator they are now parsing the sites as a whole for content for the same reasons.

By the time we built and released it, we understood Facebook has become the defacto news consumption source and without big marketing budget; our project was dead as soon as it arrived. We tried to salvage the tech and re-brand it as 'build your own app'for bloggers, but it didn't take off.

But we did take the voice sharing feature from TaN to another product called larynx, as we understood the 'News' in the name of Talk about News was one of the main inhibitors for downloads.

larynx (PH) - https://www.producthunt.com/posts/larynx

Note: If any of you tried the app and if didn't work as expected; my apologies as the app hasn't been actively developed for years now & the website exists only for historical reasons.

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#40

Hey Wired, maybe RSS would be more popular if media outlets like you would put more in your RSS feeds than a title and single sentence for each article. But I get it. You need ads to make money, and just putting ads in your RSS feed is not enough because they're not "interactive" enough, or something. You need those "engagement" metrics that you generate by making readers press a button to read the full article. I wa…

I was trying and fell short of something witty to say.

But you're right. I use feedly and have chrome extensions that's give me full articles in a readable fashion.

I would LOVE to visit some of my favorite sites and read articles as the site designers meant for them to be read. But all of the js and ad fuckery makes reading articles online an absolute goddamn chore lately.

So here we are.

RSS revival? Bring it on. I'll play drums.

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