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Show HN: You Need Feeds – Introduce friends/family/workmates to RSS and webfeeds

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Show HN: You Need Feeds – Introduce friends/family/workmates to RSS and webfeeds

#1

Post by boastful_inaba »

Partially inspired by recent discussions on HN and other places.

I've made a single-focus site to introduce your friends/colleagues/neighbours/family to RSS and web feeds.

https://www.youneedfeeds.com/

The site is meant to give the elevator pitch for feeds, show a newbie what feeds are and how to use them, set them up with a reader, and give them some nice starter content if they want it.

So much tastemaking and newsmaking power is concentrated in the hands of Facebook/Reddit/Twitter, but I'm convinced it's because much of the general populace doesn't know about feeds. Many people just don't know of any other option than the core three social sites for keeping up with what they like! They're forced to endure all the anger and fighting of social media, just to keep up to date.

The more people know about feeds, the more they use feeds, the more sites support feeds, and then more people learn about feeds in a virtuous cycle.

I hope to create more uptake of feeds amongst the general population, a more decentralised internet, and maybe just make the average user's day a bit nicer.

Let me know what you think. Questions, comments, all appreciated. Spreading the word is very appreciated. :)

Re: Show HN: You Need Feeds – Introduce friends/family/workmates to RSS and webfeeds

#2

Post by wruza »

Non-social user here (no fb, twitter, other feeds except hn and few forums).

I cannot remember why exactly rss stopped fitting my needs. I was using a standalone reader before iphone was a thing, then google reader, and then began to simply check my 3-5 sites at non-busy times. I think that for HN I miss at least 1/2 of all topics since it is “a fast board”, among others. I don’t really want to be overwhelmed by all these events and knowing only things that are top-20 right now is actually okay for me. Rss is instant and has no “top/discussed” conception.

I’m not your auditory though probably.

Re: Show HN: You Need Feeds – Introduce friends/family/workmates to RSS and webfeeds

#3

Post by netghost »

If you want to take it a step further, add some links feed readers that run as browser plugins. Unlike hosted services, they're not as likely to disappear, and they have a low barrier to entry since they don't require any sign up.

I've been working on one that runs in Firefox[1], but there are many others that look promising for Chrome as well.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/brook-feed-re...

Re: Show HN: You Need Feeds – Introduce friends/family/workmates to RSS and webfeeds

#4

Post by conesus »

Hey, this is a great contribution. Thank you for making it.

I run one of the more popular readers and I have to ask why wasn't NewsBlur included in your list. It's the oldest on that list for one. It's also got its own native client on all of the platforms. Plus, I'm a HNer and NewsBlur launched on HN as well.

As somebody who has been introducing people, in person, to the concept of RSS for exactly a decade now, I'll mention that for those who really haven't heard of it, which is 10% of folks in tech and 90% of everybody else, my strategy has been to compare it to an inbox for websites with filtering and sharing. Really hits home on the idea that every story shows up unlike the dominant competitor to RSS which is FB/twitter.

95% of the people who leave RSS, and I ask everybody who cancels why they're canceling, leave it because they get their news from social media. Social filtering provides a higher signal than the manual process. I don't blame them.

Personally I built in that serendipity into my reader because I think it belongs in a news reader, but as its own feed among many.

Re: Show HN: You Need Feeds – Introduce friends/family/workmates to RSS and webfeeds

#5

Post by petecox »

netghost wrote: post #3

If you want to take it a step further, add some links feed readers that run as browser plugins. Unlike hosted services, they're not as likely to disappear, and they have a low barrier to entry since they don't require any sign up. I've been working on one that runs in Firefox[1], but there are many others that look promising for Chrome as well. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/brook-feed-re...

You mention a lack of hosting but would it, optionally, browser-sync?

I use a web interface, The Old Reader, to access feeds from 4 devices. Whichever I'm using at the time knows which articles have been marked as read; without using a different client for each OS platform.

So a browser extension that syncs to one's Firefox account, like the bookmarks/history feature would be handy, with no additional hosted service other than having a browser login.

Re: Show HN: You Need Feeds – Introduce friends/family/workmates to RSS and webfeeds

#6

Post by netghost »

petecox wrote: post #5
netghost wrote: post #3

If you want to take it a step further, add some links feed readers that run as browser plugins. Unlike hosted services, they're not as likely to disappear, and they have a low barrier to entry since they don't require any sign up. I've been working on one that runs in Firefox[1], but there are many others that look promising for Chrome as well. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/brook-feed-re...

You mention a lack of hosting but would it, optionally, browser-sync? I use a web interface, The Old Reader, to access feeds from 4 devices. Whichever I'm using at the time knows which articles have been marked as read; without using a different client for each OS platform. So a browser extension that syncs to one's Firefox account, like the bookmarks/history feature would be handy, with no additional hosted service…

Yeah that's feasible, I haven't experimented with it yet.

Personally, I find that I read very different things on my laptop than I do on my phone (technical articles vs. news) so I haven't had a huge motivation to investigate it, but it's an interesting avenue. The only possible stumbling block is that the size of sync'd data is relatively constrained, about 200k I think, which is probably enough to hold a user's feed list and track whether they've viewed/ignored various articles, but it would require some planning.

Re: Show HN: You Need Feeds – Introduce friends/family/workmates to RSS and webfeeds

#7

Post by dewey »

This is great, a lot of people don’t know RSS exists but would be technical enough to use them if pointed in the right direction.

Somewhat related, I built a small tool to scrape sites with no feeds and generate one: https://feedbridge.notmyhostna.me/

Re: Show HN: You Need Feeds – Introduce friends/family/workmates to RSS and webfeeds

#8

Post by jiggunjer »

One problem with feeds is many sites don't have feeds and people blame RSS rather than the site not implementing it. Another problem is noise: most sites just offer a single all-or-nothing feed, while they categorize/tag posts on their site. If they offered a comprehensive set of microfeeds that would help adoption I think (or include the category metadata).

Another problem is truncated feeds, requiring users to click links and navigate to the original site to read each item. While some premium readers claim to offer complete news items, this is probably against the wishes of the site and may be circumvented similar to the add-blocker arms-race. In my opinion if a site model requires users to visit it, then they shouldn't offer feeds at all.

Lastly some feeds are behind logins (e.g. forums), not all readers support these feeds.

Re: Show HN: You Need Feeds – Introduce friends/family/workmates to RSS and webfeeds

#9

Post by mwgkgk »

jiggunjer wrote: post #8

One problem with feeds is many sites don't have feeds and people blame RSS rather than the site not implementing it. Another problem is noise: most sites just offer a single all-or-nothing feed, while they categorize/tag posts on their site. If they offered a comprehensive set of microfeeds that would help adoption I think (or include the category metadata). Another problem is truncated feeds, requiring users to clic…

Often projects that don't provide RSS do twitter, which can be converted to RSS via online services.

Also sometimes you have to look harder than usual, because the presence of an RSS icon only loosely correlates with having actual feeds. Sometimes things like domain.com/feed, domain.com/rss, domain.com/atom yield success, I suspect provided by the website engine itself.

Not to take away from your argument

Re: Show HN: You Need Feeds – Introduce friends/family/workmates to RSS and webfeeds

#10

Post by mercer »

mwgkgk wrote: post #9
jiggunjer wrote: post #8

One problem with feeds is many sites don't have feeds and people blame RSS rather than the site not implementing it. Another problem is noise: most sites just offer a single all-or-nothing feed, while they categorize/tag posts on their site. If they offered a comprehensive set of microfeeds that would help adoption I think (or include the category metadata). Another problem is truncated feeds, requiring users to clic…

Often projects that don't provide RSS do twitter, which can be converted to RSS via online services. Also sometimes you have to look harder than usual, because the presence of an RSS icon only loosely correlates with having actual feeds. Sometimes things like domain.com/feed, domain.com/rss, domain.com/atom yield success, I suspect provided by the website engine itself. Not to take away from your argument

It's as simple as: " rel="nofollow">https://twitrss.me/twitter_user_to_rss/?user=
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