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How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

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Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#71

Post by mathieudombrock »

throwaway63467 wrote: post #48

The Internet in the early 2000s felt a little more special as compared to today, when 99.999 % of content is locked in a handful of walled gardens. I mean sure everything we had then is still possible but let’s be honest everything about the web is fine tuned to deliver ads to our eyeballs, browsers, operating systems and even protocols are being designed with ad delivery in mind. Even the privacy friendly browsers j…

What I don't understand about the "RSS can't support ads" argument is that most of my RSS feeds don't actually let me read the article. Just a headline and a snippet at most. So if I want to actually read the article I'm going to have to load their page.

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#72

Post by mathieudombrock »

dabinat wrote: post #29

I don’t understand why many sites with news updates / blogs don’t offer an RSS feed. Are they expecting me to keep visiting the site over and over to see if there is new content? They’re guaranteeing I’ll never visit their site again. Perhaps they’re expecting people to subscribe to social media accounts or via email, but those both cost money to reach users. RSS is free.

It seems to me like the common pattern these days is to ask for notification permissions instead.

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#74

Post by wildzzz »

dabinat wrote: post #29

I don’t understand why many sites with news updates / blogs don’t offer an RSS feed. Are they expecting me to keep visiting the site over and over to see if there is new content? They’re guaranteeing I’ll never visit their site again. Perhaps they’re expecting people to subscribe to social media accounts or via email, but those both cost money to reach users. RSS is free.

Because you can't serve ads as nicely over RSS

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#75

Post by bartread »

carlosjobim wrote: post #32
GrayHerring wrote: post #24

I think the core issue is that it is hard to sell why you need an RSS, especially for the average user. It would not be uncommon to meet an IT professional who has at best heard the term, but never really tried to delve further. Sadly by the time the average internet dweller hears of RSS, their mind is already so ingrained in the "usual" browsing experience that anything that is out of the ordinary feels instinctivel…

I don't think the average person has to be taken into account all the time. There are millions of companies providing products and services which the average person has no interest in. Most books and music has no appeal to the average person, neither do most sports or hobbies.

> I don't think the average person has to be taken into account all the time.

This needs to be said louder and more often whenever this "average person" argument is trotted out.

Except for the very largest technology businesses, like the FAANGs of this world, relatively few technology companies are offering products and services aimed at the "average person".

No business I've ever worked for has had the "average person" as their customer. They're all aiming for particular market segments and positioning their products and services to meet the needs of those market segments. I spent a lot of time working on software developer tools that were only of interest to software developers working on the Microsoft stack, for example. Java, C++, and Python developers wouldn't have known or cared about these tools and that was just fine.

So, like you, I couldn't give two hoots what the "average person" thinks of RSS, whether they find it useful, whether they understand it, or whether they've even heard of it.

Whereas there are in fact loads of people who aren't sat on the average (whatever that means) who do find RSS incredibly useful.

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#76

Post by firefax »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #34
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then killed it too. They killed a tool people loved to promote a tool people didn't want to adopt, and in the end both ended up dead.

And killing G+ killed a community. I lost many could be real-friends, whom I've never heard from since. That if anyting was Evil, killing a community.

When I used it, it was popular among folks who would do photography as a hobby when attending academic conferences.

Tom Anderson liked one of my landscape photos, which briefly made me popular with the crew who'd roll into gallery showings for the wine and cheese.

(This was back before Instagram got acquired by Facebook and Obama let Putin take Crimea and Xi Jingping scoop up rare earth mineral rights in Africa.)

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#77

Post by abraham »

deepsun wrote: post #38
bakemawaytoys wrote: post #7

Google’s obviously fake excuse for killing their RSS reader (declining usage) was especially maddening at the time because they were pushing Google+ - which _nobody_ used.

Same thing with Google Music, it was perfect. You could stream, or could buy and download mp3, or you could upload your library to it. And the best feature: "I am feeling lucky" -- play a random song you ever liked and keep playing a generated playlist off it. But they killed it due to internal wars with YouTube Music that sucks. There's still nothing like Google Music.

I liked Google Play Music a lot but like any Google product it had a lot of issues. Still way better than YouTube Music.

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#78

Post by abraham »

bakemawaytoys wrote: post #7

Google’s obviously fake excuse for killing their RSS reader (declining usage) was especially maddening at the time because they were pushing Google+ - which _nobody_ used.

> Google’s obviously fake excuse for killing their RSS reader (declining usage)

What's obviously fake about that?

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#79

Post by titzer »

deepsun wrote: post #38
bakemawaytoys wrote: post #7

Google’s obviously fake excuse for killing their RSS reader (declining usage) was especially maddening at the time because they were pushing Google+ - which _nobody_ used.

Same thing with Google Music, it was perfect. You could stream, or could buy and download mp3, or you could upload your library to it. And the best feature: "I am feeling lucky" -- play a random song you ever liked and keep playing a generated playlist off it. But they killed it due to internal wars with YouTube Music that sucks. There's still nothing like Google Music.

Why anyone trusts any streaming music service is absolutely beyond me. It will always get enshittified. I have 65GiB of mp3s I've accumulated from ripping CDs over the years and it used to be a burden to transfer around between machines. Now it easily fits on a thumb drive or microsd and it's easy to copy it onto all of my machines.

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#80

Post by gkoberger »

Okay bear with me here.

We blame the RSS aggregators for the death, which is very fair. But I don't know if blog writers ever supported RSS, either.

With RSS, your words are read, which is great. But you lose the ability to control the feel of the post... the best blogs have a vibe where the medium is at least large portion of the message. A pg essay would feel wrong in a chunk serif font, and I've read blogs that have used interactivity to great effect. RSS also kills monetization, since you can't have ads or push users to sign up.

I would love to see a platform (mobile would be great for this) that let the creator control the design and maybe even levels of monetization. (Some could argue I'm somewhat describing Medium or Substack, although I don't think they quite hit it for me.)

I could never get into RSS. I theoretically loved it as a concept, but I missed "feeling" the vibe the author was going for.

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