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

171–180 of 358 posts

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#171

Post by remram »

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.

Twitter used to have RSS versions of every profile, accessible through api.twitter.com without credentials. It was awesome. They retired it years ago...

I took the time to make a proxy (Twitter API to RSS), and though I did write a few more, a lot more services still provide feeds (such as YouTube, Reddit, Steam, GitHub) than I thought they would. RSS is still going strong.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#172

Post by Brajeshwar »

RSS is wonderful. Like the few out there, I don't read the newspaper nor watch TV for news; but just a handful of RSS feeds that I subscribe to. I'd also stop subscribing to the few other newsletters if they have the same in RSS Feeds.

[Plug] I rely solely on RSS Feeds to power a tiny in-house project[1] which helps us get contract leads and jobs for other people.

Would love an RSS comeback.

1. Get Better Luck - https://app.getbetterluck.com/

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#173

Post by xelxebar »

askvictor wrote: post #134
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.

Don't forget Google. In fact, it's not just RSS; it's other open standards (e.g. XMPP) that they embraced initially, then dropped.

FWIW, YouTube still has RSS available:

  https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=CHANNELID
  https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?user=USERNAME
  https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=YOUR_YOUTUBE_PLAYLIST_NUMBER
You used to be able to go into your subscription manager and download an OPML file with the RSS feeds for your subscriptions. I'm unable to find that buton anymore though.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#174

Post by p2t2p »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #59
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 contro…

How come it doesn't? I'm a paying subscriber of Ars Technica so I have unique personified URLs to access various of their feeds. You also can include images from the web into the feed and most of the clients will gladly render it. There are myriads of tricks you can use to collect data.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#176

Post by vengefulduck »

xelxebar wrote: post #173
askvictor wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget Google. In fact, it's not just RSS; it's other open standards (e.g. XMPP) that they embraced initially, then dropped.

FWIW, YouTube still has RSS available: https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=CHANNELID https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?user=USERNAME https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=YOUR_YOUTUBE_PLAYLIST_NUMBER You used to be able to go into your subscription manager and download an OPML file with the RSS feeds for your subscriptions. I'm unable to find that buton anymore though.

You can still download the OPML file you just click export to RSS reader at the bottom of this page: https://www.youtube.com/subscription_manager

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#178

Post by daveFNbuck »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #106
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

Feedly is nice but centralized. We should have learned the lesson.

All feed readers are centralized, even one you run on your laptop. I learned from Reader's shutdown that a centralized service shutting down is no big deal. I can easily export my feeds from Feedly and move them somewhere else if the need arises.

I learned from Google that if I want a nice centralized feed reader I need one that I can support. That's why I pay for Feedly.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#179

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

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.

RSS is as alive as www.myspace.com is.

Before you point out how RSS powers all kinds of other invisible stuff that most people aren't aware of, that's not what this article is talking about, nor is it what people mean when they say RSS is dead.

If you truly believe that RSS has as much influence over consumers in 2018 as a decade or so ago, you probably do live in an alternate reality.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#180

Post by groby_b »

JoshMnem wrote: post #158
anonymouz wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have to view source to find the URLs. In Firefox, do Right Click->View Page Info. The "Feeds" tabs lists the links. There are also extensions (e.g. "Awesome RSS") that will put a symbol in your URL bar.

Thanks, I didn't know that. Mozilla should make that more prominent so that users who don't know what RSS/ATOM is could "subscribe to this website" with just a click.

That was funny.

Mozilla used to make that more prominent. Most users didn't care, because they still didn't know what that weird icon meant. That was ultimately the downfall of RSS - the web tech scene never managed to communicate to the average user what RSS was good for, what it did, and how to use it.

The issue isn't "not knowing about RSS/ATOM". You don't need to. The same way e.g. you don't need to know what the octane numbers for gasoline mean. What you do need to know is what it does for you, and that answer has always been "not enough to satisfy the hassle".

(A good chunk of the blame here goes to all the larger, traffic-hungry web sites that only published excerpts via RSS, with a click-through link. It transformed a useful feed into a rather useless list of self-updating bookmarks)

Post reply on HN