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

Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

neflabs.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 358 posts

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#51

Post by forapurpose »

dewey wrote: post #15
forapurpose wrote: post #13

I'll repeat my plea for an RSS reader that enables the user (i.e., me) to efficiently process 1,000+ feed items in maybe 20 minutes. Also, it needs to automate aspects of managing feeds (detect when the fail, maybe find a replacement, give me an interface for resolving the problem). By "process" I mean: Read the headline and sometimes the summary, decide whether to read the story, open the story (if I'm reading it),…

I don't want to tell you what to do but wouldn't it be more helpful to just be more selective on what you subscribe to? I subscribed to way too many feeds in the past and going through them with shortcuts / opening them in the background and then going through the opened pages to read them afterwards works well. It's even quite fast but as soon as you skip a day it just piles up until you can't work off the queue any…

> wouldn't it be more helpful to just be more selective on what you subscribe to?

I am very selective! Otherwise there would be far more. There are many feeds I cut despite having some excellent, irreplaceable content, because they also add too many unread feed items (i.e., poor signal-to-noise).

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#52

Post by vanderZwan »

disconnected wrote: post #31

"People" keep rattling on about how RSS needs to be revived. Do these people live in some sort of alternative reality where: - The guardian - BBC - Reuters - Ars Technica - LWN - Hacker News and a fuck ton others don't have an RSS feed? Or some sort or reality where Flym (or the myriads of RSS apps) don't exist? Because I sure as hell don't.

You're mixing up websites who provide RSS with end-users who are supposed to make use of it.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#53

Post by joshschreuder »

douglaswlance wrote: post #21

I'm surprised how often RSS is mentioned on Hackernews, and how infrequently some recommends Feedly. It has wonderful features, like saving articles, collection boards, team features, and popularity-based sorting options. (Full disclosure, I don't work for Feedly nor do I own any of the company. I just like the service!) http://feedly.com

I use Newsblur and have been a happily paying customer since Google Reader went down.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#54

Post by fjsolwmv »

weberc2 wrote: post #37
originalsimba wrote: post #27

Did anyone else notice how corporations like Twitter and Facebook quietly tried to kill RSS in the past 10 years? RSS is a wonderful technology with embodies the spirit of the Internet. Facebook and Twitter are, by comparison, cancer. I often recommend WordPress to folks as an alternative for blogging, because it is free and has RSS functional out of the box.

> Facebook and Twitter are, by comparison, cancer. How are FB and Twitter comparable to RSS? And how are they trying to kill it? Like they're not supporting it on their platform? If so, why should I care? Or do you mean "they're conspiring to kill it across the Internet", in which case please elaborate. EDIT: I'm getting downvoted; I can only assume people are interpreting my comment as vouching for FB/Twitter, which…

They are a way to subscribe to notifications of updates from your favorite content providers. But they don't use a standards-conformant protocol when consuming those notifications.

By becoming popular, they reduce content providers' incentive to support RSS. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#55

Post by tnorthcutt »

whorleater wrote: post #47
originalsimba wrote: post #27

Did anyone else notice how corporations like Twitter and Facebook quietly tried to kill RSS in the past 10 years? RSS is a wonderful technology with embodies the spirit of the Internet. Facebook and Twitter are, by comparison, cancer. I often recommend WordPress to folks as an alternative for blogging, because it is free and has RSS functional out of the box.

>I often recommend WordPress to folks as an alternative for blogging Didn't blogging start on wordpress/blogger/livejournal?

Movable Type preceded WordPress by a couple of years or so, FWIW.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#56

Post by frooxie »

disconnected wrote: post #31

"People" keep rattling on about how RSS needs to be revived. Do these people live in some sort of alternative reality where: - The guardian - BBC - Reuters - Ars Technica - LWN - Hacker News and a fuck ton others don't have an RSS feed? Or some sort or reality where Flym (or the myriads of RSS apps) don't exist? Because I sure as hell don't.

A few years ago, my favorite writers and artists had personal blogs. Today, many of them have moved to Instagram, Twitter and/or Facebook, making them inconvenient or impossible to follow using RSS.

Apart from the migration to walled gardens, I also think it's a problem that 99% of web users haven't heard of RSS.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#57

Post by fny »

originalsimba wrote: post #27

Did anyone else notice how corporations like Twitter and Facebook quietly tried to kill RSS in the past 10 years? RSS is a wonderful technology with embodies the spirit of the Internet. Facebook and Twitter are, by comparison, cancer. I often recommend WordPress to folks as an alternative for blogging, because it is free and has RSS functional out of the box.

Did Twitter[0] kill RSS or is that mode of expression not conducive for it?

Evan Williams (Blogger Founder, RSS -> Twitter co-founder, No-RSS -> Medium founder, RSS[1]) has explored many of these modalities. He probably decided Twitter didn't need RSS.

Maybe we're all learning about the health of certain forms of discourse?

https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/214874118-RSS-feed...

[0]: https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/214874118-RSS-feed... [1]: I lack faith in Facebook given Zuckerberg's historic lack of an ethical compass.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#58

Post by findjashua »

douglaswlance wrote: post #21

I'm surprised how often RSS is mentioned on Hackernews, and how infrequently some recommends Feedly. It has wonderful features, like saving articles, collection boards, team features, and popularity-based sorting options. (Full disclosure, I don't work for Feedly nor do I own any of the company. I just like the service!) http://feedly.com

I have been a happy user of Inoreader (no affiliation, just a happy user)

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#59

Post by LoSboccacc »

originalsimba wrote: post #27

Did anyone else notice how corporations like Twitter and Facebook quietly tried to kill RSS in the past 10 years? RSS is a wonderful technology with embodies the spirit of the Internet. Facebook and Twitter are, by comparison, cancer. I often recommend WordPress to folks as an alternative for blogging, because it is free and has RSS functional out of the box.

RSS has no analytics. that's the big weakness. RSS has been stripped of content even in most other blogs, substituting it for links back to the main sites, which is a workable compromise for webmaster but not one that helps readers. yahoo pipes where a stopgap for a while, until yahoo pulled the plug.

I think what's needed is an intrusive format that delivers metrics and tracking. sure it'd be another tool for control and manipulation, but we'd at least have back the ability to read our news centralized.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#60

Post by jjrh »

disconnected wrote: post #31

"People" keep rattling on about how RSS needs to be revived. Do these people live in some sort of alternative reality where: - The guardian - BBC - Reuters - Ars Technica - LWN - Hacker News and a fuck ton others don't have an RSS feed? Or some sort or reality where Flym (or the myriads of RSS apps) don't exist? Because I sure as hell don't.

Main reason I don't exclusively use RSS (like I used to) is tons and tons of websites just provide a couple lines in the RSS feed and not the entire article.

Super annoying.

Post reply on HN