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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)

#211

Post by fragmede »

zdunn wrote: post #210
wildzzz wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you can't serve ads as nicely over RSS

Aren't the ads already on the webpage? If the RSS contains snippets of the pages and I have to navigate to the page to view the article, then I see your ads. Also, can't the ads be a part of the feed just as nicely as the articles? What's stopping publishers from inserting ads as items in the feed?

Can't get the same metrics off the ads in an RSS feed. Companies, like people, are cheap so they don't want to spend money on advertising that doesn't work. RSS feed ads don't report back the same way browser advertising does.

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

#212

Post by zdunn »

Grombobulous wrote: post #129
al_borland wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mainstream ended up using social media to solve the problem RSS had already solved years earlier… it just had poor marketing. A lot of people do use RSS without realizing it, via podcasts.

While that may be true, I just don’t believe for a second that RSS had any chance of becoming mainstream outside of techie circles. “Solving the problem” is only one aspect of the reason something becomes popular in the mainstream. I also don’t think the user experience offered by products like TikTok is possible with RSS.

But RSS did become mainstream; podcasts are a normal part of media now and non-techies seem to have no problem finding and consuming them. They don't have to know about RSS.

There's no reason similar UIs can't exist for text based content. Google Reader, and then G+, had a path to becoming "mainstream outside of techie circles"

There's nothing special about TikTok's user experience. It uses an algorithm that isn't interested in providing a chronological feed, but I don't see why RSS couldn't be used to build something similar. Again, podcasts use it and it works well for that. The discovery aspect happens outside of the scope of RSS, but once you find things you like, RSS works well for tracking them.

The tiktok (or any corporate social media, really) comparison is also a bit odd because they don't need RSS, even if they wanted to provide a chronological feed. The platform hosts the content so it knows when there's new stuff and how to access it to provide to followers. RSS is useful in a decentralized environment where the content could be hosted anywhere and you want to aggregate it

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

#214

Post by zdunn »

fragmede wrote: post #211
zdunn wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't the ads already on the webpage? If the RSS contains snippets of the pages and I have to navigate to the page to view the article, then I see your ads. Also, can't the ads be a part of the feed just as nicely as the articles? What's stopping publishers from inserting ads as items in the feed?

Can't get the same metrics off the ads in an RSS feed. Companies, like people, are cheap so they don't want to spend money on advertising that doesn't work. RSS feed ads don't report back the same way browser advertising does.

That's only a problem for the engorged advertising industry that's been built up in the past couple decades. Putting ads in an RSS feed is no different than non-algorithmic ads on a webpage or classified sections in newspapers, which worked fine for everybody until targeted advertising was introduced.

Secondly, that just leads back to my first point. The ads (even targeted ads) are already on the final content.

I just can't view this as a failing of RSS. It wasn't intended to help publishers advertise, it was intended to help end users track the sites they wanted to track. I understand these are some of the reasons Google and other publishers disincentivized the usage of RSS but RSS works great for its intended purpose. I want more technology like RSS, not tech that helps publishers exploit us

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

#215

Post by gmadsen »

fl4regun wrote: post #157
gmadsen wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 90s were very different from the 2000s

the commenter was talking about the internet in the 2000s, as am I. I was only born in the 90s.

i thought it was clear we were talking about internet in the 90s, the original commentor said three decades ago...

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

#216

Post by betenoire »

tombert wrote: post #39
betenoire wrote: post #4

Google Reader going away felt like the beginning of the end the internet as I knew it. I miss websites

Yeah. There honestly was a purity to the disconnected nature of shitty Geocities and Angelfires pages, where filled with amateurs writing shitty HTML just because they thought it would be cool to have their own web site. That's not a dig, to be clear. I was one of those kids writing shitty HTML for Geocities. I don't hate the modern internet, but I feel like there's roughly now about ~10 sites that I visit frequently…

Same, I was one of them, too. It used to feel like a place you'd discover things. Now we are led to them.

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

#217

Post by frollogaston »

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 remember in middle school we had to do a preso on a web technology. I chose RSS. Nobody had heard of it before. After seeing my preso, nobody cared.

I stopped using it not long after. Think the problem is people don't care enough to put in the time curating a feed.

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

#219

Post by drnick1 »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #194
firatsarlar wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we have ad blockers, ad blocker detectors.... But apparently no ad blocker blocker. Should I continue? Block the blockers by blocking the blockage... ouch.

There are adblock blockers... some sites detect the ad blocker and prevent you from visiting the site without ads... so yeah, you then don't visit the site.

I just go back and ignore the website when that happens.

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

#220

Post by LightBug1 »

rpdillon wrote: post #10
LightBug1 wrote: post #2

Yeah, fuck Google for all of this. That's my intellectually considered response. Fuck Google.

Upvoted not for your particular phrasing, but because in a sense, this was my experience as well: I wanted to work at Google, and I thought Google was learning how to marry a great business with treating customers well. Killing GReader was the inflection point for me, when Google tipped from "Great!" to "Kinda evil". It's been a slide ever since.

Exactly the same trajectory / story this side. Tragic ... but fond of those hopeful / naive days.
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