I Still Use RSS • Hacker News Board

Re: I Still Use RSS

#61

Post by nkellenicki » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

I still use RSS. One thing I've discovered is that nearly every site offers an RSS feed. I presume they're not aware of this, and that whatever CMS they use (WordPress, etc) offers it out of the box. Often times it takes a simple "View Source" to find it.

RSS doesn't seem to be dying, it's just that it's no longer mainstream since Google Reader died. I run my own instance of TinyTinyRSS on my server and couldn't be happier.

Re: I Still Use RSS

#62

Post by AnthonyMouse » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

sgtfrankieboy wrote: post #29

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I always wonder why they aren't as popular now. 1) Google makes really quite good RSS reader (Google Reader) 2) Everybody switches to it, competition atrophies 3) Google shuts it down

Google shutting down their RSS reader didn't really have an impact. They shut it down back in March of 2013. If you look at the trends graph[1] for RSS it was dying out for years. [1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F0...

Long-term Google trends graphs are kind of useless because they're a percentage of queries over a period of time when the demographics of the user base was changing as millions of new people got on the internet.

Here's the one for javascript:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=javascri...

Clearly javascript has been slowly dying out. But wait, that can't be right.

They're also a poor proxy for usage because the existing user base with feeds already set up doesn't have to do a search query to continue using it, so if a large number of them lose access at once, it's barely a blip because they wouldn't be doing searches for it either way.

Re: I Still Use RSS

#63

Post by riedel » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 6:07 PM UTC

Actually the best user experience I get by using the telegram messenger as a feed aggregator. I use Manybot to only post the links, which plays nicely with telegram's instant preview feature (pretty much like reader mode/readability). Love this way to read feeds (also syncs across devices, etc)

Re: I Still Use RSS

#64

Post by numpad0 » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

blakesterz wrote: post #15

This quote is exactly right: "Having only the content I want to see only be shown when I want to see it with the freedom to jump between readers as I please, all with no ads? For me, no other service comes close to the flexibility, robustness, and overall ease-of-use that RSS offers." I always wonder why they aren't as popular now. It takes more work to add site to a reader, and more effort to even use one I suppose.…

Probably for same reasons as why slot machines with minimalist aesthetics don’t exist

Re: I Still Use RSS

#65

Post by mattowen_uk » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

I also still use RSS:

http://www.mattowen.co.uk/files/rss.jpg

My home-grown 'reader' - Importantly, it only shows what's currently in each feed - there's no history, which removes the stress of 1,000 of unread articles piling up.

Re: I Still Use RSS

#66

Post by pedro1976 » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

Maybe my side project rss-proxy [0] might be interesting for you. It automatically transforms static HTML markup to RSS, so ideally you would not need to write a parser manually.

[0] https://github.com/damoeb/rss-proxy

Re: I Still Use RSS

#67

Post by susam » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 6:13 PM UTC

xnx wrote: post #48

susam wrote: post #4

I provide an RSS feed for my blog. From my access.log, I see that there is a decent number of subscribers to my feed. Here is the data I could pull from it: Feedly 91 subscribers Inoreader 16 subscribers Feedbin 6 subscribers NewsBlur 4 subscribers The Old Reader 3 subscribers BazQux 2 subscribers WordPress 2 subscribers ------------------------------- Total 124 subscribers I get about 4000-6000 hits to my website on…

How do you identify Feedly subscribers? Isn't there a single request from Feedly that it uses for all of its users?

Here is what I see in my access logs:

  [30/Jan/2021:12:58:03 +0000] "GET /blog/rss.xml HTTP/1.1" 200 22757 "-" "Feedly/1.0 (+http://www.feedly.com/fetcher.html; 91 subscribers; like FeedFetcher-Google)"
  [31/Jan/2021:12:58:04 +0000] "GET /blog/rss.xml HTTP/1.1" 200 22757 "-" "Feedly/1.0 (+http://www.feedly.com/fetcher.html; 91 subscribers; like FeedFetcher-Google)"
  [01/Feb/2021:12:58:13 +0000] "GET /blog/rss.xml HTTP/1.1" 200 22757 "-" "Feedly/1.0 (+http://www.feedly.com/fetcher.html; 91 subscribers; like FeedFetcher-Google)"
  [02/Feb/2021:12:58:19 +0000] "GET /blog/rss.xml HTTP/1.1" 200 22757 "-" "Feedly/1.0 (+http://www.feedly.com/fetcher.html; 91 subscribers; like FeedFetcher-Google)"
  [03/Feb/2021:12:58:30 +0000] "GET /blog/rss.xml HTTP/1.1" 200 22757 "-" "Feedly/1.0 (+http://www.feedly.com/fetcher.html; 91 subscribers; like FeedFetcher-Google)"

Re: I Still Use RSS

#68

Post by k1m » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

djhworld wrote: post #38

I've mentioned this on HN before, one pattern I've noticed is a lot of sites tend to truncate their RSS feed so you have to click through to see the full article etc. This is mostly OK but kinda frustrating, as in the before-covid times I used to ride the London Underground a lot where no celluar signal is available in the tunnels - so my offline RSS reader would be useless. So I wrote a little web service accepts an…

I've worked on something similar for some years: http://ftr.fivefilters.org

An older version available on BitBucket: https://bitbucket.org/fivefilters/full-text-rss/src/master/

Re: I Still Use RSS

#69

Post by ribadeodev » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

djhworld wrote: post #38

I've mentioned this on HN before, one pattern I've noticed is a lot of sites tend to truncate their RSS feed so you have to click through to see the full article etc. This is mostly OK but kinda frustrating, as in the before-covid times I used to ride the London Underground a lot where no celluar signal is available in the tunnels - so my offline RSS reader would be useless. So I wrote a little web service accepts an…

This is literally the only reason I can see somebody using this pattern. The similarities with a paywall are remarkable.

Re: I Still Use RSS

#70

Post by susam » Wed, Feb 03, 2021, 6:15 PM UTC

COGlory wrote: post #11

susam wrote: post #4

I provide an RSS feed for my blog. From my access.log, I see that there is a decent number of subscribers to my feed. Here is the data I could pull from it: Feedly 91 subscribers Inoreader 16 subscribers Feedbin 6 subscribers NewsBlur 4 subscribers The Old Reader 3 subscribers BazQux 2 subscribers WordPress 2 subscribers ------------------------------- Total 124 subscribers I get about 4000-6000 hits to my website on…

What is the topic of your blog?

I don't write very often but when I do it is usually tech or math. I didn't link to it here because it might look like self-promotion. In case you are interested to take a look, please see my profile for the link.