RSS Is Dying, and You Should Be Very Worried • Hacker News Board

Re: RSS Is Dying, and You Should Be Very Worried

#41

Post by nakkiel » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 5:27 PM UTC

Lagged2Death wrote: post #31

The implementation of RSS in Firefox was always an "ultra-lite" version that I doubt will be missed by any serious RSS enthusiasts. A full-featured RSS reader feels a lot like a mailing list, so I think it's appropriate to keep RSS in Thunderbird rather than Firefox. In some respects, a web-app RSS reader (like Bloglines or Google Reader) is better. You can access your feeds from any computer, the read/unread status…

Agreed.

I once wrote a Python script that would parse RSS feeds and write emails in a maildir (or whatever is supported by Python); one was then able to read news from an MUA which was comfortable (Mutt by then). I lost that script when I did a 'dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda' before quitting my last job and realizing 2 minutes later that I forgot to backup many useful scripts I wrote over the course of my year and half in that NGO.

Being a smoking Frenchman, I'm tempted to be gratuitously insulting to the author but there's one interesting problem that could come from RSS' disappearance from browsers: the lack of visibility may very well "destroy" the format in the long term. Also, as the web is increasingly publicized, the incentive to remove a format that generates traffic but may hardly generate revenue might be high.

Re: RSS Is Dying, and You Should Be Very Worried

#42

Post by TomOfTTB » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 5:28 PM UTC

stanleydrew wrote: post #3

bretpiatt wrote: post #2

It is pretty clear why Google doesn't like RSS, it stops you from browsing the web and that is how they get paid. As a user though I also don't like it anymore and I'll share why... This isn't 1970 anymore where I want to read "What's New" from a small list of new sources. I prefer to go each day to a list of curated aggregators like HN or what the people I follow on Twitter or saying. This is vastly superior to RSS…

"It is pretty clear why Google doesn't like RSS, it stops you from browsing the web and that is how they get paid." But they built and are actively maintaining Google reader. I don't think Google dislikes RSS, rather they are hesitant to build a browser feature for something that should really be a separate application.

They also employ 2 of the 3 creators of PubSubHubBub a technology specifically created to enhance feed syndication. It's also a project that was developed on company time (albeit 20% time) and is hosted on their GoogleCode website. AND Google Alerts was one of the first (if not THE first) to implement the technology.

Re: RSS Is Dying, and You Should Be Very Worried

#43

Post by stanleydrew » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 5:28 PM UTC

wyclif wrote: post #37

stanleydrew wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It is pretty clear why Google doesn't like RSS, it stops you from browsing the web and that is how they get paid." But they built and are actively maintaining Google reader. I don't think Google dislikes RSS, rather they are hesitant to build a browser feature for something that should really be a separate application.

Robert Scoble says he was told (ostensibly by someone at Google) that the Google Reader team has been largely disbanded, and that the project is no longer maintained. He's mentioned this a couple of times on Quora, on Buzz, and on his blog.

Well I'll go one step further then and point out that Google is the creator of PubSubHubbub (http://code.google.com/p/pubsubhubbub/). My point is that I don't think Google hates users aggregating content and having it pushed to them rather than browsing for it.

Re: RSS Is Dying, and You Should Be Very Worried

#44

Post by TomOfTTB » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 5:30 PM UTC

stanleydrew wrote: post #43

wyclif wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Robert Scoble says he was told (ostensibly by someone at Google) that the Google Reader team has been largely disbanded, and that the project is no longer maintained. He's mentioned this a couple of times on Quora, on Buzz, and on his blog.

Well I'll go one step further then and point out that Google is the creator of PubSubHubbub ( http://code.google.com/p/pubsubhubbub/ ). My point is that I don't think Google hates users aggregating content and having it pushed to them rather than browsing for it.

I don't disagree but in fairness it was created by 3 people one of which worked at SixApart

Re: RSS Is Dying, and You Should Be Very Worried

#45

Post by kroc » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 5:34 PM UTC

ghurlman wrote: post #17

It's hard to take the author's concern seriously, when I can't even find the RSS link on his/her page.

because the browser is supposed to provide the button.

Why do you think I’m worried? I don’t want to have to clutter my site with a button to an XML feed that nobody understands. I want the browser auto-discovery to do the right thing and present the right interface to make RSS worthwhile.

Turning the key in a car shouldn’t present you a diagram on how to connect the battery. Browsers shouldn’t sit there dumbfounded when presented a piece of RSS.

Re: RSS Is Dying, and You Should Be Very Worried

#46

Post by lwhi » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 5:35 PM UTC

RSS is not dying! One of the traditional applications for RSS (a browser-based RSS feed-reader) is becoming obsoleted because most browsers aren't particularly good at managing feeds.

I can understand why the benefits of RSS aren't more widely understood by the general public; the technology makes use of an abbreviation (an abbreviation that isn't actually much more comprehensible when its spelt out).

RSS is a service, used by applications to make content portable. It's not a final solution, it's a tool that can be integrated into a number of different applications. It's quite likely that many of the applications it could be used for haven't been created yet.

A slightly ridiculous article.

Re: RSS Is Dying, and You Should Be Very Worried

#47

Post by stanleydrew » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 5:36 PM UTC

TomOfTTB wrote: post #44

stanleydrew wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I'll go one step further then and point out that Google is the creator of PubSubHubbub ( http://code.google.com/p/pubsubhubbub/ ). My point is that I don't think Google hates users aggregating content and having it pushed to them rather than browsing for it.

I don't disagree but in fairness it was created by 3 people one of which worked at SixApart

Thanks for the info. Before posting my comment I did some quick Googling and couldn't find much about the history of PubSubHubbub. I did want to be sure that I wasn't wrong about Google's involvement. Using the word "creator" with respect to Google itself was probably a little strong.

Re: RSS Is Dying, and You Should Be Very Worried

#48

Post by liuhenry » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 5:36 PM UTC

reader5000 wrote: post #4

bretpiatt wrote: post #2

It is pretty clear why Google doesn't like RSS, it stops you from browsing the web and that is how they get paid. As a user though I also don't like it anymore and I'll share why... This isn't 1970 anymore where I want to read "What's New" from a small list of new sources. I prefer to go each day to a list of curated aggregators like HN or what the people I follow on Twitter or saying. This is vastly superior to RSS…

I don't think aggregators obviate the need for rss. I don't really like the idea of the masses entirely determining what content I have awareness of. Furthermore, aggregators simply don't offer the sheer volume of content pumped by an rss feed with a good couple hundred subscriptions. And if you are into niche content like say arxiv's math.OA you pretty much need rss.

How much time does it take you to sort through it all? That's the tradeoff you make with aggegators vs. rss. Personally, I'm also subscribed to a few hundred feeds on Google Reader, and I usually go through them first by deleting everything older than a day, and then sorting by "magic". But that has major limitations: I lose occasional posts and older, but still interesting, content, and magic just skews the sort towards what I've read before (maybe through keywords?), and I lose out on new and interesting content.

RSS - you have high volume and high breadth, but it takes a long time to look through it and find the things that are interesting.

Aggregators - the "most interesting" posts are right there on the front page, but it has a very narrow focus and is filtered or skewed by the community.

I think what we're really looking for is the most interesting content that is customized for us, but it's a big problem to tackle. Newsblur (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1869136) was an interesting idea; not sure where that's gone since November's post.

Re: RSS Is Dying, and You Should Be Very Worried

#49

Post by kroc » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 5:37 PM UTC

zoul wrote: post #13

RSS is dying because browser vendors do not want to implement or maintain integrated RSS readers? That does not sound very convincing.

RSS aggregators are used by the elite few. When websites start deciding to use Twitter and Facebook instead of RSS because it’s faster and gives them better features, and regular users understand it better, then there will be complaints.

Re: RSS Is Dying, and You Should Be Very Worried

#50

Post by nakkiel » Sun, Jan 02, 2011, 5:37 PM UTC

yycom wrote: post #33

Why should this particular incantation receive special treatment over others?

How are other elements not specially treated?

Also, this will make a good reading: http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/links.html#h-12.3

"Although LINK has no content, it conveys relationship information that may be rendered by user agents in a variety of ways (e.g., a tool-bar with a drop-down menu of links)."