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

RSS Is Better Than Twitter

gizmodo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 259 posts

Re: RSS Is Better Than Twitter

#171

Post by mark_l_watson »

zarriak wrote: post #83

Part of the problem that I don't think people talk about needing twitter for work is how they don't separate it as publishing platform and a news platform. I think it is much better to use a kindle that you update before you go to work than using twitter as both. It really helps to limit it to a finite amount of content for you to consume as well as making it so you don't have the almost non-existent barrier of insta…

Good idea. You can also use something like Instapaper to mark articles to read but set aside a few times a week to actually carefully read these ‘curated’ articles. For me a big benefit for doing this that when I do sit down to read what I have ‘curated’, I discard half as being not something I need to spend time reading. Instead on Instapaper, just bookmarking articles, then deleing the bookmarks after reading works well.

Re: RSS Is Better Than Twitter

#173

Post by mark_l_watson »

dragontamer wrote: post #89
lazyjones wrote: post #87

RSS is like articles without comment sections, completely pointless nowadays. If you can't read corrections, conflicting opinions for something, you might just as well go watch TV. The whole point of Twitter is that it's commentary, not a feed of published articles.

90% of internet comments are low effort garbage that simply isn't worth anyone's time. The other 10% of high quality, high effort posts take more than 280 words, and need 5 to 20 twitter posts to get a full idea of their concepts. RSS is a different network of users, so it really can't be compared to Twitter. But those mega tweet 10 posts in a row threads would be far better served by a classic blog and RSS feed... R…

When ever I (rarely) take the time and effort to write a blog, then I drop a link to the new blog article to twitter and FB. Most of the people I follow on twitter do much the same.

Re: RSS Is Better Than Twitter

#174

Post by thekyle »

dkarras wrote: post #153
BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not Google? Google failed to gain traction in the social network space with G+. If you can't beat them commoditize them! Why not make interoperable networks based on open standards first class citizens in chrome/chromium? Not just by adding support but also by helping move the RSS standard forward.

RSS is anti-ads. If people don't leave their reader, they don't visit websites, don't load ads, don't ping tracking services. So any alternative to RSS, content creators relying on ads will fight tooth and nail to not make it mainstream ever.

That said, Google did produce a version of AdSense specifically for RSS feeds (although it was discontinued in 2012).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdSense#Feeds

Re: RSS Is Better Than Twitter

#175

Post by jhund »

captn3m0 wrote: post #131

If you are interested in RSS, I did a twitter-thread [3] recently on interesting projects in the space. Reproducing here: If you are interested in helping revive #RSS, a thread on some good FOSS projects around RSS: 1. RSS-Bridge[0] - RSS Feeds for websites that don't give you one. Supports instagram/facebook/Google Search and many more (150+) websites. Very easy to contribute, and there are open requests for lots of…

I'd like to mention https://contentgems.com - a free web service that follows any RSS feed you want. It then gives you powerful filters to include/exclude content you're not interested. You can also connect your twitter home timeline to extract all articles linked to from a tweet. And finally, there are workflows that you can use to re-mix RSS feeds and produce new ones. Paid plans give you more resources, however the free plan is super valuable for individual users. Disclaimer: I'm one of the co-founders.

Re: RSS Is Better Than Twitter

#176

Post by thekyle »

StavrosK wrote: post #23
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.

The one thing I've been frustrated with using ActivityPub for blogs is that it is push based instead of get based like RSS. Basically it means that the responsibility is on the website owner to send out notifications for new content and maintain a database of subscribers instead of just publishing a feed that people can periodically download to check for new stuff.

Re: RSS Is Better Than Twitter

#177

Post by Yhippa »

mastrsushi wrote: post #167

I did use RSS through Google Reader briefly back in 2009. Then I found out about Twitter, and immediately thought of it as a modern response. Unifying the web's news feeds into one technology was such an obvious solution, its emergence was unavoidable, no matter what way it came. Web platforms always had some form of portal, blog publishing service, general discussion board, or better yet a single tap service where e…

Peak Internet for me was using Google Reader, sharing articles, and having discussions about them with my Google Buzz friends.

Re: RSS Is Better Than Twitter

#178

Post by Bolderman »

m-p-3 wrote: post #37
hprotagonist wrote: post #2

Considering how i read HN and thus how i’m reading this — and that i don’t have a twitter account — i guess i have to agree! RSS is very, very nice. Especially for keeping track of all the journals I have to keep an eye on.

And it's super easy to use these feeds to automate stuff. Half of my IFTTT are about monitoring RSS feeds and taking an action upon them. The other halfs are webhooks.

Interesting. Do you mind to explain this a bit more?

Re: RSS Is Better Than Twitter

#179

Post by gnomewascool »

oliwarner wrote: post #93

They're very different. RSS only let you listen. And it only works if you already know who you want to listen to. Twitter et al expose you to other content you're not already "following" by letting the people you do follow quickly push things in your eyeline. But RSS is just a format for sharing data. There's no built-in client for having a conversation, for tracking conversations. You ultimately still need a point o…

> Twitter et al expose you to other content you're not already "following" by letting the people you do follow quickly push things in your eyeline.

How is that different from the people whom you do "follow" with RSS recommending other feeds or individual articles, or quoting these articles, with their own comments?

(Mostly agreed about the point regarding third-party pushed conversations.)

Re: RSS Is Better Than Twitter

#180

Post by JasonFruit »

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 was not disappointed to see RSS removed from Firefox, because I want my already too-complex browser to have as limited a set of functions as possible. The more first-class features they remove, the more secure and usable their product will be.
Post reply on HN