Twitter and Facebook Both Quietly Kill RSS • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter and Facebook Both Quietly Kill RSS

#21

Post by voidfiles » Mon, May 09, 2011, 3:32 AM UTC

RSS is awesome, and standards help ease integration, but we need to stop freaking out about RSS.

What we need to focus on is making sure companies endorse open data. Allowing users to get data in, and out in a reasonable format.

Re: Twitter and Facebook Both Quietly Kill RSS

#22

Post by turbodog » Mon, May 09, 2011, 3:33 AM UTC

ankrgyl wrote: post #14

bradleyland wrote: post #4

The title is a bit of a double entendre. At first reading, I thought the claim was that (once again), Organization X had killed RSS (figuratively). As it turns out, Facebook and Twitter have, quite literally, killed RSS within the scope of their own systems by removing it from key locations. In my view, RSS was never the right tool for this application anyway. Social networks are naturally conversational in nature, b…

A common "general" application of RSS is news, but this will hopefully be slowly phased out as well. The New York Times offers an awesome API ( http://developer.nytimes.com/ ) which gives you a much better view of their data than their RSS feeds (which they still provide).

So I'm supposed to use the NYT's custom API to get articles when RSS has, for years, provided a "general" method for me to do the same thing for not only the NYT but millions of other sources?

Re: Twitter and Facebook Both Quietly Kill RSS

#23

Post by Luyt » Mon, May 09, 2011, 3:52 AM UTC

turbodog wrote: post #22

ankrgyl wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A common "general" application of RSS is news, but this will hopefully be slowly phased out as well. The New York Times offers an awesome API ( http://developer.nytimes.com/ ) which gives you a much better view of their data than their RSS feeds (which they still provide).

So I'm supposed to use the NYT's custom API to get articles when RSS has, for years, provided a "general" method for me to do the same thing for not only the NYT but millions of other sources?

Yes, and they want you to install a special 'NYT app' for that, which will be future: every company and news outlet will have its own app.

Re: Twitter and Facebook Both Quietly Kill RSS

#24

Post by hammock » Mon, May 09, 2011, 3:55 AM UTC

Does anyone have an example of RSS being used/picked up by the mainstream user?

Re: Twitter and Facebook Both Quietly Kill RSS

#25

Post by ankrgyl » Mon, May 09, 2011, 4:03 AM UTC

turbodog wrote: post #22

ankrgyl wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A common "general" application of RSS is news, but this will hopefully be slowly phased out as well. The New York Times offers an awesome API ( http://developer.nytimes.com/ ) which gives you a much better view of their data than their RSS feeds (which they still provide).

So I'm supposed to use the NYT's custom API to get articles when RSS has, for years, provided a "general" method for me to do the same thing for not only the NYT but millions of other sources?

No, and that's why they still provide the RSS feed. My point is that in the immediate future, companies like FB, Twitter, and NY Times will experiment with APIs that provide richer functionality than RSS. Hopefully within a relatively short time frame, the APIs will start converging into a standardized, widely adopted replacement for RSS that builds on these ideas.

Re: Twitter and Facebook Both Quietly Kill RSS

#26

Post by dholowiski » Mon, May 09, 2011, 5:56 AM UTC

Rss was just a transitional technology. Twitter and Facebook have made it far easier for normal people to get news updates, and for developers there are API's. RSS will live on for podcast delivery (at least until apple dropsre-invents" podcasting) but other than that, let's just let RSS rest in peace.

Re: Twitter and Facebook Both Quietly Kill RSS

#27

Post by nikcub » Mon, May 09, 2011, 6:08 AM UTC

eli wrote: post #9

UPDATE: Dave Stevens shared a hack around this in the comments that you can use with the Twitter API. Using a well-documented feature of the API? That is not a hack.

You must have missed the memo where now almost anything you do on a computer is hacking.

Got a form to submit in Django? I'm hacking. Got nodejs to run a sample app? I'm hacking. Integrate a shitty jQuery plugin? I'm hacking. RTFM - nope, hacking.

Re: Twitter and Facebook Both Quietly Kill RSS

#28

Post by idle_processor » Mon, May 09, 2011, 6:09 AM UTC

hammock wrote: post #24

Does anyone have an example of RSS being used/picked up by the mainstream user?

Google Reader didn't die like Wave; that implies some level of success.

Re: Twitter and Facebook Both Quietly Kill RSS

#29

Post by leon_ » Mon, May 09, 2011, 6:44 AM UTC

nikcub wrote: post #27

eli wrote: post #9

UPDATE: Dave Stevens shared a hack around this in the comments that you can use with the Twitter API. Using a well-documented feature of the API? That is not a hack.

You must have missed the memo where now almost anything you do on a computer is hacking. Got a form to submit in Django? I'm hacking. Got nodejs to run a sample app? I'm hacking. Integrate a shitty jQuery plugin? I'm hacking. RTFM - nope, hacking.

just abuse the word. I hate that everything is "hacking" now - so I started overusing the word. whenever I'm doing something I am hacking. (Sometimes it's not limited to computer activities.)

I hope other people will will catch on and overuse the word to the point where it's not cool anymore and everything gets back to normal. (and hackernews can be renamed back to webmasternews)

Re: Twitter and Facebook Both Quietly Kill RSS

#30

Post by leon_ » Mon, May 09, 2011, 6:45 AM UTC

dholowiski wrote: post #26

Rss was just a transitional technology. Twitter and Facebook have made it far easier for normal people to get news updates, and for developers there are API's. RSS will live on for podcast delivery (at least until apple dropsre-invents" podcasting) but other than that, let's just let RSS rest in peace.

news in 140 chars ... reminds me of that movie where they water their plants with soda.