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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

#131

Post by [deleted] »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #127
patio11 wrote: post #103

RSS saves me from having to load up 100 different sites several times a day just to check what’s ‘new’. Everything wrong with RSS in a nutshell: this is a problem real people don't have.

I fully appreciate the sentiment, I hate when people build stuff people don't need. But I want to dig a little at this. I think the fact that most people only have access to CNN or Time or Fox News or Cosmopolitan or Maxim or whatever... that there is not an easy way for people to get news aggregated from 100's of their peers and thought leaders in their affinity groups.... I think that IS a problem people have. It m…

[deleted]

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

#132

Post by philwelch »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #127
patio11 wrote: post #103

RSS saves me from having to load up 100 different sites several times a day just to check what’s ‘new’. Everything wrong with RSS in a nutshell: this is a problem real people don't have.

I fully appreciate the sentiment, I hate when people build stuff people don't need. But I want to dig a little at this. I think the fact that most people only have access to CNN or Time or Fox News or Cosmopolitan or Maxim or whatever... that there is not an easy way for people to get news aggregated from 100's of their peers and thought leaders in their affinity groups.... I think that IS a problem people have. It m…

Your comment reminds me of this Calvin and Hobbes strip: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_RbiRIw_w4rU/SNkssvl3KeI/AAAAAAAAAC...

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

#133

Post by bambax »

An interesting point of this post is that Twitter is effectively about to replace RSS, and that in order to use Twitter one has to have an account with it and "follow" such and such.

But is this really true? Wouldn't it be possible to build an (authorized) interface to Twitter that would serve search results according to topics/keywords without actually creating an account with Twitter?

Something along the lines of

    twitfeed.com/topics?q=topic1+topic2+topic3
I'm sure this already exists somehow?

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

#134

Post by sjs »

patio11 wrote: post #103

RSS saves me from having to load up 100 different sites several times a day just to check what’s ‘new’. Everything wrong with RSS in a nutshell: this is a problem real people don't have.

My non-technical sisters know what RSS is and use Google Reader to watch blogs of family & friends. I couldn't believe it when my sister first mentioned RSS or Google Reader, I remember exclaiming "You know what RSS is?!"

I bet if someone made a sports oriented RSS reader a whole lot of people would use it. Some people like going to <= 10 sites to see what's new but people who follow more than 10 sites would like the idea of RSS.

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

#135

Post by Semiapies »

chc wrote: post #128
patio11 wrote: post #103

RSS saves me from having to load up 100 different sites several times a day just to check what’s ‘new’. Everything wrong with RSS in a nutshell: this is a problem real people don't have.

It's slightly exaggerated, but I really did use to do something very much like that. I used to load up a ton of sites (less than 100, but enough to be a pain) every day because, like most people, I had no clue what RSS was. I was literally about to write a script automating the "Have you been updated?" check when I came across RSS in my research. I know most people don't like to visit more than five sites on a regula…

I did something similar. Guess I'm not a real person, either!

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

#136

Post by nycticorax »

I use Google Reader, because I want to know when there's new stuff on certain sites without visiting them all, but I don't like it that much. I prefer to read the stories on the web site, with its "native" formatting and whatnot. Is there a tool in any of the common browsers that will highlight a bookmark (or something like that) when there's new content on the site? I think I'd greatly prefer that to the whole business of using a feed reader. Am I the only one?

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

#137

Post by rjvir »

bambax wrote: post #133

An interesting point of this post is that Twitter is effectively about to replace RSS, and that in order to use Twitter one has to have an account with it and "follow" such and such. But is this really true? Wouldn't it be possible to build an (authorized) interface to Twitter that would serve search results according to topics/keywords without actually creating an account with Twitter? Something along the lines of t…

Kind of: http://twitter.com/search?q=node.js%20OR%20from:reddit%20OR%...

This searches all posts that contain "node.js", are from reddit, or are from hackernewsbot. You can even get an RSS feed for it, at http://search.twitter.com/search?q=node.js%20OR%20from:reddi...

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

#138

Post by WildUtah »

Sindisil wrote: post #81
angrycoder wrote: post #34

I have used RSS for years now. I check google reader about as often as I check hacker news. I start my morning off with a cup of coffee while I read my feeds using Reeder on the iphone or ipad. Not once have I used any of the RSS features of a browser. I really don't see the point. I guess google doesn't either.

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.

In fact, the article is on a site without any visible RSS feed available itself. You have to read the HTML source and manually parse out the rss feed.

And then the author complains that it's hard to use and people aren't taking advantage of it. Jerk.

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

#139

Post by axod »

dlsspy wrote: post #126
axod wrote: post #40

RSS never really caught on beyond a geek crowd. I've never used it.

I had a lot of TiVo conversations like this ten or eleven years ago. Lots of people who never used the technology would tell me why it didn't make sense to them.

Is TiVo still big in the US? (It doesn't exist in the UK). We have various hard disk based recorders, and sky plus etc

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

#140

Post by omaranto »

I won't miss the RSS browser button: I hardly ever use it! While I read many RSS feeds I almost never subscribe to them (which is what I've used the button for). The average number of times I've subscribed to a feed I read is extremely close to 1, and the average number of times I've subscribed to each existing feed in the world is extremely close to 0.
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