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RSS Is Better Than Twitter

gizmodo.com

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Re: RSS Is Better Than Twitter

#61

Post by criddell »

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 bet just about every article that shows up in your RSS reader was also linked to from Twitter. It's very easy to use Twitter for RSS.

Re: RSS Is Better Than Twitter

#62

Post by kazinator »

Glench wrote: post #24
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

An RSS feed is an XML file that lives under some URL. The RSS reader (or aggregator) polls that URL periodically and picks up new items that have appeared.

It's like a web page, itemized into a very regular syntax.

If you want to "tweet" using RSS, you need a URL somewhere where you can upload updates to XML content; then give people that URL.

Either you have to join some website where content (like blogs) you create are exported as RSS feeds, or else run your own domain.

Re: RSS Is Better Than Twitter

#63

Post by sova »

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…

The first part of your post puts the priority on having more software that can read a reliable formula, which I think is the opposite way to go, since the forumla is already there can't all browsers do this? Yes, but they have refused up until now, why? Because their focuses is web pages ... Make some hybrid RSS web feed with a universal interface and you have Twitter. Approach it from the software side and you have federated, inconsistent implementations of a reliable formula.

Re: RSS Is Better Than Twitter

#64

Post by runxel »

yorwba wrote: post #21
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 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/rssprevie…

For those (like me) who actually liked the old system of a folder with "bookmarks" in it there is Livemarks [0].

[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/livemarks/

Re: RSS Is Better Than Twitter

#65

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

knight17 wrote: post #28
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…

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.

I thought Firefox used to have a one click way to subscribe in your preferred reader back in the Google Reader days.

Re: RSS Is Better Than Twitter

#67

Post by TheTruth1234 »

RSS actually meant, mostly, that you had to have something worthy of RSS'ing ... a blog, an article, something.

Twitter? any old Joe can just post some bullsh!t that marinated in their minds for -0.5 seconds and that just gets added to Twitter and potentially my timeline.

Yes, RSS is far better than Twitter for some uses. Uses that are actually of value.

Re: RSS Is Better Than Twitter

#68

Post by burtonator »

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…

I'm considering integrating RSS with Polar:

https://getpolarized.io/

Ton on my plate now trying to focus on shipping mobile and a few other features too.

I like the idea of Polar having data sources that are high quality and that the user can just easily subscribe to specific PDFs, research, or high quality content feeds.

We're also going to add social content discovery which is sort of like a Twitter feed but just people who are annotating content on Polar.

Re: RSS Is Better Than Twitter

#69

Post by u801e »

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…

> I just wish Mozilla introduce subscribing to RSS as a first class feature in Firefox.

Fortunately, Thunderbird still has this feature.

Re: RSS Is Better Than Twitter

#70

Post by pradn »

y4mi wrote: post #50
ape4 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow I never knew. I would have used it if I knew.

The "rss support" was a folder, filled with links named after the article titles. It was good that it was removed, as it was useless to put it mildly

It was an easy and simple way to get into RSS. I used to use it quite a bit. Just the effort of finding an RSS reader is enough to turn people off the service. Compare to Twitter, which exists on all platforms. I don't think we can underestimate the interface problem for RSS.
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