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RSS Is Dying, and You Should Be Very Worried

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

#91

Post by aaronkaplan »

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 prefer to go each day to a list of curated aggregators like HN or what the people I follow on Twitter or saying

But aggregators can publish RSS streams too. How is following someone on Twitter different from subscribing to his RSS feed?

I would agree that a site like HN isn't very attractive to read via RSS. When the ranking is dynamically determined by readers' interest, you lose something by freezing the list in the form of an RSS stream. But for a curated site like Slashdot, what difference does it make if the link stream comes in the form of RSS or as tweets?

Incidentally, I wouldn't call HN a curated site. Slashdot has editors/curators; HN doesn't.

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

#92

Post by Lagged2Death »

rhymeswithcycle wrote: post #64
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…

I've always used the browser RSS button precisely in order to add feeds to Google Reader -- I feel like that's the button's main use case. It's an immediate, standard way to see whether a page offers a feed, and to quickly save the feed in your reader. I've found it incredibly useful.

It's been a while since I used Firefox's RSS button. I see it offers more options than I remember (like subscribing with a web-based reader). And it looks like the plan is to eliminate any standard in-browser indication of the presence of an RSS feed, something I didn't really catch from the blog post's talk about a "button on the toolbar."

That does seem pretty inconvenient. Many of the posts at bugzilla argue that the most important feature of the button is the fact that it indicates, in a standard way, that feeds were detected. And I agree.

On the other hand, since it's Firefox, there will probably be several feed-finder extensions available before 4.0 is final.

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

#93

Post by Groxx »

codeup wrote: post #77
Groxx wrote: post #73

> IF RSS DIES, WE LOSE THE ABILITY TO READ IN PRIVATE Based on what causal chain? At best, it's an incredible stretch of a slippery slope fallacy.

Disagree. The author clearly refers to corporations like Facebook and Twitter tracking your reading behavior.

So run NoScript. Run in private mode. Block their cookies. Block their address in your hosts file. You can use wget, curl, or any other cookieless downloading tools, none of which will expose you reading The Times to Facebook. RSS doesn't even prevent against this; it can be behind a login, it can require cookies or not serve up info, and it can send info to Facebook denoting you viewed article X. All of which is determined by the server it's running on, not the format of data it serves up.

Browsers are unnecessary for RSS or tracking, and it's a very poor match for browsing behaviors anyway.

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

#94

Post by mithaler »

kroc wrote: post #45
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…

If I copy the URL of your site/blog into my RSS reader's Add Subscription dialog, I don't know of any RSS readers that wouldn't scrape your site for the link tags I assume you put in and discover the feed for me.

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

#96

Post by GBKS »

From the user flow, RSS doesn't make much sense. Clicking an RSS button shows you the same thing you just looked at, except without the site design and only partial content (Safari). Currently, in Chrome, I just see a dense block of text.

RSS is an amazing tool, but maybe we just haven't found the right UI for it yet. Exposing it in the browser doesn't work very well and treating RSS as an Inbox (like Google Reader) where every item needs to be marked as read is too overwhelming. Personally, I think a social approach to RSS that puts content and personal preferences at the fore-front would solve a lot of this.

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

#97

Post by javadi82 »

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.

Here is the link re: Robert's comment from Quora:

http://www.quora.com/Is-Google-investing-in-Google-Reader-an...

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

#99

Post by codeup »

Groxx wrote: post #93
codeup wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. The author clearly refers to corporations like Facebook and Twitter tracking your reading behavior.

So run NoScript. Run in private mode. Block their cookies. Block their address in your hosts file. You can use wget, curl, or any other cookieless downloading tools, none of which will expose you reading The Times to Facebook. RSS doesn't even prevent against this; it can be behind a login, it can require cookies or not serve up info, and it can send info to Facebook denoting you viewed article X. All of which is det…

Why should I have to do all that if RSS already exists? There's no reason to accept letting this working technology die.

I agree that browsers are unnecessary for RSS though.

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

#100

Post by troels »

thebooktocome wrote: post #87
Sindisil wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, some blogs have begun to rely on RSS functionality in the browser, and don't place an RSS link visibly on the page. That makes it rather difficult to subscribe.

Most of the time you can copy the site's URL into Google Reader and it will try to find the proper RSS feed. It works for blogs hosted on Blogger and Wordpress, at least; not sure how it does it.

"not sure how it does it."

The same way that some browsers do it. There is a meta-tag in the page, which describes which feed formats are available, and where to find them.

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