RSS Is Better Than Twitter • Hacker News Board

Re: RSS Is Better Than Twitter

#21

Post by yorwba » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 3:12 PM UTC

PavlovsCat wrote: post #12

knight17 wrote: post #3

I just wish Mozilla introduce subscribing to RSS as a first class feature in Firefox. If they can introduce and integrate Pocket, I think an open technology like RSS deserves a fair chance. But they'd need to invest a little bit to make it easy to subscribe—similar to following on Twitter/Instagram or Liking pages on Facebook—to receive site updates. Having to find and enter byzantine URLs is not the way to go althou…

Re-introduce, not introduce. Firefox not only used to do a fine job of displaying RSS feeds, it also simply displayed an RSS icon in the URL bar (if the page had the respective link elements HTML header) from which you could subscribe to all the provided feeds. There certainly was room for improvement, but still, they had it, and they canned it. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/live-bookmarks Thunderbird is still…

I use the Awesome RSS addon [1] to get the icon in the URL bar back. Also RSSPreview [2] to see whether the feed actually contains what I want to subscribe to. The previous integration where you could add the feed to Thunderbird directly from Firefox with a single click was much better, though.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/awesome-rss/

[2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/rsspreview/

Re: RSS Is Better Than Twitter

#22

Post by PavlovsCat » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

zikzak wrote: post #13

PavlovsCat wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re-introduce, not introduce. Firefox not only used to do a fine job of displaying RSS feeds, it also simply displayed an RSS icon in the URL bar (if the page had the respective link elements HTML header) from which you could subscribe to all the provided feeds. There certainly was room for improvement, but still, they had it, and they canned it. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/live-bookmarks Thunderbird is still…

I've been wondering if the recent addition of AMP to Gmail as precursor to Gmail having RSS integration. I know I'm delusional but it feels good to think there might be a push back to RSS reading in a Google product.

I wish there was pushback against the notion of "hoping" and "wishing" for companies to do the right thing. Companies should be more afraid of the ire of informed customers informing other customers, than of competition, that's the delusion I live in... they should worry about having done too little, too late, instead of us always keeping an ever slimmer hope for ever smaller breadcrumbs alive.

Re: RSS Is Better Than Twitter

#23

Post by StavrosK » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 3:18 PM UTC

mooreds wrote: post #15

I love RSS, and have for years. My first blog post ever was about RSS: http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/4 . I recently wrote that new developers should use RSS: https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2019/03/25/use-an-rss-rea... But reading through the post and the comments here, I'm sensing an omission. What Twitter (and social media in general) provides that RSS doesn't is interaction . I don't login to twitte…

I'm excited about ActivityPub integration in blogs. You can give your site its own Mastodon ("Twitter") account, articles show up as posts and replies show up as comment threads.

Re: RSS Is Better Than Twitter

#24

Post by Glench » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 3:19 PM UTC

abhinai wrote: post #20

I completely understand and respect the author's sentiments. However, it is unfair to compare RSS to Twitter. Twitter is a place where anyone and everyone can express their opinions while RSS is a technology and a mechanism to get an updated feed from services and blogs we care about. Most of these blobs and services will be well written or perhaps professionally written articles. These are two very different systems…

That feels kind of like a historical circumstance. I could easily imagine something based on RSS where people just express small blurbs like on Twitter. Heck, I've even thought about abandoning Twitter's UIs and creating RSS feeds for all the people I follow. At least then I'd be able to get chronological ordering and read/unread markers on tweets that way

Re: RSS Is Better Than Twitter

#25

Post by taeric » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 3:21 PM UTC

mooreds wrote: post #15

I love RSS, and have for years. My first blog post ever was about RSS: http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/4 . I recently wrote that new developers should use RSS: https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2019/03/25/use-an-rss-rea... But reading through the post and the comments here, I'm sensing an omission. What Twitter (and social media in general) provides that RSS doesn't is interaction . I don't login to twitte…

Amusingly, this is what I loved about Google reader. It made every post a message target for my friends.

Re: RSS Is Better Than Twitter

#26

Post by Swizec » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 3:21 PM UTC

abhinai wrote: post #20

I completely understand and respect the author's sentiments. However, it is unfair to compare RSS to Twitter. Twitter is a place where anyone and everyone can express their opinions while RSS is a technology and a mechanism to get an updated feed from services and blogs we care about. Most of these blobs and services will be well written or perhaps professionally written articles. These are two very different systems…

I always considered twitter to be a modern global IRC, freenode if you will. At that it is amazing.

Complete with all the problems of spam, overwhelm, etc. You gotta find your people, foster a community, and stay there. I owe a lot of my career to twitter I’d say. It’s an amazing place.

Re: RSS Is Better Than Twitter

#27

Post by taeric » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 3:22 PM UTC

zikzak wrote: post #13

PavlovsCat wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re-introduce, not introduce. Firefox not only used to do a fine job of displaying RSS feeds, it also simply displayed an RSS icon in the URL bar (if the page had the respective link elements HTML header) from which you could subscribe to all the provided feeds. There certainly was room for improvement, but still, they had it, and they canned it. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/live-bookmarks Thunderbird is still…

I've been wondering if the recent addition of AMP to Gmail as precursor to Gmail having RSS integration. I know I'm delusional but it feels good to think there might be a push back to RSS reading in a Google product.

Gmail had rss integration through Reader back in the day. With the short lived Buzz, had easy integration for discussions on rss feeds.

Re: RSS Is Better Than Twitter

#28

Post by knight17 » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 3:24 PM UTC

PavlovsCat wrote: post #12

knight17 wrote: post #3

I just wish Mozilla introduce subscribing to RSS as a first class feature in Firefox. If they can introduce and integrate Pocket, I think an open technology like RSS deserves a fair chance. But they'd need to invest a little bit to make it easy to subscribe—similar to following on Twitter/Instagram or Liking pages on Facebook—to receive site updates. Having to find and enter byzantine URLs is not the way to go althou…

Re-introduce, not introduce. Firefox not only used to do a fine job of displaying RSS feeds, it also simply displayed an RSS icon in the URL bar (if the page had the respective link elements HTML header) from which you could subscribe to all the provided feeds. There certainly was room for improvement, but still, they had it, and they canned it. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/live-bookmarks Thunderbird is still…

Firefox had a way to display RSS/Atom feeds earlier which they removed, but it did not allow subscribing to them in any meaningful way other than live bookmarks.

Re: RSS Is Better Than Twitter

#29

Post by skybrian » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 3:24 PM UTC

abhinai wrote: post #20

I completely understand and respect the author's sentiments. However, it is unfair to compare RSS to Twitter. Twitter is a place where anyone and everyone can express their opinions while RSS is a technology and a mechanism to get an updated feed from services and blogs we care about. Most of these blobs and services will be well written or perhaps professionally written articles. These are two very different systems…

280 characters now, though still too short. There are plenty of professional writers on Twitter.

One problem is that there is too much emphasis on short, witty quips in widely shared tweets. It has everyone going for the witty zinger and that makes conversation shallow and obnoxious. Occasionally there are decent tweetstorms, though.

Re: RSS Is Better Than Twitter

#30

Post by mooreds » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 3:27 PM UTC

taeric wrote: post #25

mooreds wrote: post #15

I love RSS, and have for years. My first blog post ever was about RSS: http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/4 . I recently wrote that new developers should use RSS: https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2019/03/25/use-an-rss-rea... But reading through the post and the comments here, I'm sensing an omission. What Twitter (and social media in general) provides that RSS doesn't is interaction . I don't login to twitte…

Amusingly, this is what I loved about Google reader. It made every post a message target for my friends.

I haven't used Google reader. I do use newsblur, but haven't found the conversation features in there useful. The population is so much smaller than that of twitter.