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

It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

danielmiessler.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 376 posts

Re: It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

#231

Post by gregn »

wasdfff wrote: post #198
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…

But the thing is, it’s not dead nor dying. I don’t think very many major websites have stopped their rss feeds. Maybe it’s just you that isn’t using it. There is rarely a webpage that I find that can’t be followed via rss, either natively which is most always the case, but there are also services that an rss-ize content.

Agree here. I don't think many sites have either. You have to dig a little, open the code-behind, but they're there.

Re: It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

#232

Post by methou »

hinkley wrote: post #76
zelly wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ja, I've seen enough of these sites, the content is awful but filled the first pages in my Google search.

I used to call them malicious SEO sites, but your point makes better sense than my hatred.

Re: It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

#235

Post by tschellenbach »

ghostpepper wrote: post #87
tschellenbach wrote: post #50

If anyone wants to help, here's an open source project I worked on quite a bit: https://github.com/GetStream/winds Goal is to build RSS for regular users instead of the power user audience that RSS readers tend to cater to. I think this is part of the problem. The market for RSS shrank. All commercial RSS readers focused on the people who pay (IE the power users). Creating a user experience that is just not viable fo…

I don't mean to sound harsh but if a user is either required to run their own React/NodeJS (which is not going to happen for your stated target audience of "regular users") or to use a centrally managed RSS service that could go away at any moment... doesn't this defeat the purpose of syndication / federation a little bit? If

Yup, also picking up the tab to host it: https://winds.getstream.io/

Not sure if I'll keep on doing it though, bit expensive for a side project

Re: It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

#236

Post by charles_f »

zelly wrote: post #224
Dotnaught wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The fair market price for content is $0. That's a gross oversimplification. Lots of content isn't worth anything but some is. If you're a stock trader, for example, certain timely information is well-worth paying for. And there's a market for that served by Bloomberg, Thomson-Reuters, and so on. The term "content" obscures the differences by suggesting its all interchangeable. That's certainly in the interest of the…

I meant "content" as in cultural content--articles, Q&A submissions, blog posts, takes, memes, recipes, how-tos, tutorials. Content that makes up >80% of G search results. At one time, there was a price for such content because you could only get it from a print publication or from broadcast television. Now that there are no barriers to posting, we see how many people actually want to publish content even if they hav…

How do the patreons of the world fit in there? There is such content creators that I enjoy enough to give them a few bucks every month to make sure they can keep doing it

Re: It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

#237

Post by leemcalilly »

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…

How is it any harder for a publisher to embed a display ad than do what John Gruber does and have a weekly sponsor in his RSS feed? It's easy to insert ads into any RSS feed. The publisher/advertising argument for the death of RSS doesn't hold water. Folks prefer Twitter and Facebook to get a feed of news. The majority of people don't want to do the work of manually curating their feed. RSS just didn't win on the merits as a feature. I still love RSS and use it every day, but it wasn't "killed by publishers."

Re: It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

#238

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

Has this guy been living under a rock? Slashdot and Digg? seriously?

RSS died because better systems came along which did a much better job at following sources "directly".

He talks as if we no longer have any relationship with authors anymore, when Twitter and Facebook actually made audience and publishers closer than ever.

RSS died because it wasn't necessary anymore. It's a typical pattern of pendulum swinging between centralization and decentralization.

If you're going to say "It's time to get back to RSS", at least understand why RSS is dead. Then maybe you will have a real solution instead of a non solution like "go download feedly".

Lastly, people blame Google for "killing RSS" by abandoning google reader, but these people have no idea. RSS was dead long before Google discontinued it. Instead of coming up with conspiracy theory, think about more plausible reason for why something would be disrupted by another piece of technology.

Re: It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

#240

Post by ineedasername »

VLM wrote: post #99
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…

Maybe the world needs an unmonetizable space. I keep hearing how RSS is dead for many years. My favorite blogs seem to be doing fine, its not like my newsblur stream of posts has decreased over the years. Many people are unhappy about non-monetized readers and authors just being happy off by themselves. The people most able to "fix" that are the happy readers and authors, and the readers are not very motivated to spa…

Quality content doesn't happen without costs.
Post reply on HN