It’s Time to Get Back to RSS • Hacker News Board

Re: It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

#71

Post by Crespyl » Sun, May 17, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

nanna wrote: post #60

RSS seems to me to have use cases far beyond website updates, if it was extended a little. Event syndication. Say that I'd collect the event feeds from a load of cinemas, music venues I like around the world, why not, plus those of musicians. I want my RSS-based events reader to narrow down the date field to be this weekend, location to be my town, and ticket field to be available, and why not price to something I ca…

It's really not that RSS couldn't handle (/be extended to handle) this use case, it's that the parties publishing this information do not want you to have that much control over the feed.

See how much effort Netflix puts into making their catalog hard to browse, to obfuscate the actual size of the catalog and promote specific things they need to show a large return on, or all the sponsorships/ad-deals/promotions that inevitably begin to clutter almost any commercial news feed.

We have the technology, but publishers will fight tooth and nail to keep control over the platform away from the end user.

Re: It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

#72

Post by debaserab2 » Sun, May 17, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

RSS was already broken and then medium came along and slurped up the majority of independent/longtail blogs (where most of the good stuff really is) and now we're stuck in some awful state that there seems to be no easy way out of. Content needs to be decentralized again before RSS can rule again.

Re: It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

#73

Post by zelly » Sun, May 17, 2020, 5:36 PM UTC

DevX101 wrote: post #53

RSS is dying (or dead) because it was incompatible with the dominant business model on the internet -- advertising. This is why Google killed it. This is why lots of professional publishers hated it. With HTTP you'd be able to earn money via embedded ads but you'd earn exactly $0 via RSS since the feed was stripped of ads, just content. This forced publishers to put useless blurbs, redirecting to the HTTP version, wh…

Micropayments have been tried. They all failed. The fair market price for content is $0. What is happening is that the only publishers that will exist shall be only those who create it for free. There is simply a glut of content out there because the barrier to creating content is completely gone.

Re: It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

#74

Post by thelazydogsback » Sun, May 17, 2020, 5:37 PM UTC

pembrook wrote: post #25

thelazydogsback wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than the issue of posting abridged content, it seem like all the other issues can be handled with a capable client. It's better to post more (inlc. the podcasts, etc.) and then filter as you desire, no?

Whenever you put the burden on the end user to endlessly customize everything you’ve just lost 95% of the mainstream public and [insert thing] remains a niche tool used by people on HackerNews. ...and then mom still ends up getting her news from Facebook.

5% of users is fine -- nobody is saying that RSS should be the only interface to the internet-at-large. We just want to enable the 5% (or less) of users that are invested enough in the process that it's worth it for them to get their specialized content efficiently, but not lose out on valuable content.

Re: It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

#75

Post by pzumk » Sun, May 17, 2020, 5:42 PM UTC

znpy wrote: post #64

tolle wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many EU countries are Apple News available in?

All of them, I guess?

Apple News is not available in Germany. The only thing we get is the non-customisable News-Widget.

Re: It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

#76

Post by hinkley » Sun, May 17, 2020, 5:47 PM UTC

zelly wrote: post #73

DevX101 wrote: post #53

RSS is dying (or dead) because it was incompatible with the dominant business model on the internet -- advertising. This is why Google killed it. This is why lots of professional publishers hated it. With HTTP you'd be able to earn money via embedded ads but you'd earn exactly $0 via RSS since the feed was stripped of ads, just content. This forced publishers to put useless blurbs, redirecting to the HTTP version, wh…

Micropayments have been tried. They all failed. The fair market price for content is $0. What is happening is that the only publishers that will exist shall be only those who create it for free. There is simply a glut of content out there because the barrier to creating content is completely gone.

Free, loss leader, or honeypot.

Most places use content to get you to look at ads, but some places write content as a sort of ad itself - we said something thoughtful to build brand recognition, consumer confidence.

Re: It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

#77

Post by KajMagnus » Sun, May 17, 2020, 5:48 PM UTC

zelly wrote: post #73

DevX101 wrote: post #53

RSS is dying (or dead) because it was incompatible with the dominant business model on the internet -- advertising. This is why Google killed it. This is why lots of professional publishers hated it. With HTTP you'd be able to earn money via embedded ads but you'd earn exactly $0 via RSS since the feed was stripped of ads, just content. This forced publishers to put useless blurbs, redirecting to the HTTP version, wh…

Micropayments have been tried. They all failed. The fair market price for content is $0. What is happening is that the only publishers that will exist shall be only those who create it for free. There is simply a glut of content out there because the barrier to creating content is completely gone.

> Micropayments have been tried. They all failed

Would be interesting to read about that — you happen to have any links?

I websearched for "failed micropayments" and found: "One type of micropayment that does work — one you might not even think of as a micropayment — is in-app-purchases (IAP). IAP are a huge source of revenue [...]"

And: "One reason users don’t like micropayments for content [to read] is it requires a decision ... waste the users’ mental effort ... costs so little that its implied worth is almost nothing" (here: https://blog.applovin.com/why-micropayments-fail-and-one-not... )

Re: It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

#78

Post by znpy » Sun, May 17, 2020, 5:49 PM UTC

pzumk wrote: post #75

znpy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of them, I guess?

Apple News is not available in Germany. The only thing we get is the non-customisable News-Widget.

Well it might not be available as a service but apple might be handling the RSS URLs anyway.

Re: It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

#79

Post by number6 » Sun, May 17, 2020, 5:49 PM UTC

generalpass wrote: post #3

I saw this pop up in my HN RSS feed.

All this talk about rss being dead. Almost every major side offers an rss feed somewhere.

I self host an rssreader and use it for new YouTube videos or release on github or hackernews and my favourite blogs.

Re: It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

#80

Post by worble » Sun, May 17, 2020, 5:50 PM UTC

DevX101 wrote: post #53

RSS is dying (or dead) because it was incompatible with the dominant business model on the internet -- advertising. This is why Google killed it. This is why lots of professional publishers hated it. With HTTP you'd be able to earn money via embedded ads but you'd earn exactly $0 via RSS since the feed was stripped of ads, just content. This forced publishers to put useless blurbs, redirecting to the HTTP version, wh…

> This forced publishers to put useless blurbs, redirecting to the HTTP version, which was a bad user experience and just sucked.

Is this that bad? I personally don't mind this at all, I subscribe to RSS feeds so I can easily tell at a glance who has an update in one place. If they then want to redirect me for the full content, then so be it, especially if the alternative is me loading every single one of those sites every day to check anyway.