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The power of the RSS reader

marco.org

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Re: The power of the RSS reader

#41

Post by ldh »

bsimpson wrote: post #20

I never got into RSS readers, but I use Hacker News and Reddit for the purposes Marco is describing. I have Pulse on my phone set up to follow a handful of RSS feeds (Hacker News, The Verge, Daring Fireball, Ars Technica, etc.) so I have an easy way to see what's happening if I have a couple minutes to kill throughout my day.

I think you're missing what he says. Hacker News and Reddit are completely perpendicular use cases to RSS.

From the article: The true power of the RSS inbox is keeping you informed of new posts that you probably won’t see linked elsewhere.

I feel like I've been shouting this into the void over the last few days of RSS-related submissions, but RSS is not best suited as a news-discovery paradigm. Aggregators like HN or Reddit serve that purpose. RSS's sweet spot is tracking deeper content on niche sites or topics that don't get swept up in hype mills, and if you're interested in more than two or three blogs or sites like that, RSS is essentially the way to track that content. Being able to share that and discuss with a select group of people was icing on the cake that Google Reader added.

Without seeming overly defensive about it, I feel like everyone who dismisses RSS lately with "that's what HN is for" has never used RSS in the way that many of us find indispensable.

Re: The power of the RSS reader

#42

Post by icebraining »

monsur wrote: post #7

This is precisely why I like Fever as an RSS reader. Fever lets you separate feeds into low-volume kindling and high-volume sparks. Kindling are the feeds you want to keep up with regularly, while items that are mentioned across Sparks bubble up to the top (Its like having your own personal Hacker News).

Well, I'd say any reader with some kind of categorization support (tags, folders, etc) lets you do that.

I have folders in Tiny Tiny RSS that never accumulate more than a couple of unread items, and I have a folder with 22000 unread items, it works just fine.

Re: The power of the RSS reader

#43

Post by jdechko »

joebadmo wrote: post #4

Personally, I have different labels. I have a high volume label that I nuke with impunity, then another label with low volume feeds that I treat more like Marco describes in tfa. This lets me keep up with all of those low volume feeds, but also skim the daily news when I have time. I also prune my feeds pretty aggressively. This is probably a much fiddlier setup than most people will want, but really so is any RSS re…

I also had a 2 folder system, but subscribe to so few feeds that going away for a weekend only leaves me with a few hundred unread articles. Since many sites overlap in terms of content, I don't even always need to read every article anyway.

Re: The power of the RSS reader

#44

Post by bluthru »

bsimpson wrote: post #20

I never got into RSS readers, but I use Hacker News and Reddit for the purposes Marco is describing. I have Pulse on my phone set up to follow a handful of RSS feeds (Hacker News, The Verge, Daring Fireball, Ars Technica, etc.) so I have an easy way to see what's happening if I have a couple minutes to kill throughout my day.

All of the sites you mentioned don't play to the strength of RSS. RSS is great for YOUR interests, not a crowd's interest. It's the difference between following an author or artist versus following a publication or radio station.

Re: The power of the RSS reader

#45

Post by wcgortel »

This is a very interesting use case, particularly in investment analysis, my area of specialty.

The problem of obscure, rarely updated blogs with fantastic information (but no reader base) is plainly evident here. I can think of a blogger who is a fixture on "who's who" lists, but publishes a blog so ill-trafficked you can hear the crickets chirping. There are hundreds of these guys.

I'm at work on a finance-specific version of this. Hopefully we can announce something before the readerpocalypse.

Re: The power of the RSS reader

#46

Post by webwanderings »

The rss2email script apparently works like a charm but it isn't suitable for large number of feed subscription. This is where Google Reader came in handy because I didn't have to care how long it takes to grab however many feeds I have under my account. Ultimately, all RSS feed readers (old and new) are going to be suffering from this issue of retrieving large number of feeds.

Re: The power of the RSS reader

#47

Post by charlieok »

The feature I want on RSS readers: Volume sliders.

A volume slider per feed, and perhaps also a global one.

If a feed is posting too much stuff, but I still like some of the stuff on it, I'd prefer not to unsubscribe if I had a better option.

If I notice a feed getting a bit noisy, I'd like to open a view for that feed, with titles and timestamps. Then I'd just move a slider and watch stuff drop out, until I've turned it down to a volume I can handle.

Hopefully, the lower-signal items will drop out of view first and the higher-signal items last. The more data available for making these rankings, the better. Comment counts or scores from the hosting site should help. So should links/shares/likes/comments across the major social networks.

Re: The power of the RSS reader

#48

Post by tfinniga »

jcurbo wrote: post #6

This exactly matches my use case for RSS. High volume daily websites - like HN - I read directly. I went through a phase where I tried to read HN via RSS (in Google Reader) and for me it wasn't better than just hitting HN directly. But for the kind of sites Marco mentions (which I read most of, actually) that update on a semi-daily or weekly basis, RSS readers are perfect because I don't want to go and visit those pa…

Right, RSS is great for low volume stuff that you don't want to miss.

I do have a way of using it productively with high-volume sites. Specifically, I read some of reddit via RSS. Sometimes I go deep into a project, and avoid distractions for quite a while. At the same time, I don't want to miss out on the zeitgeist. So I set up an RSS feed that takes the top n items over a certain period - for example, the top 3 weekly stories from proggit.

Then when I'm done the project I can go back and see what important items from the group discussion I've missed. Basically just turn a constant stream into a small amount of the best content that I don't want to miss.

Re: The power of the RSS reader

#49

Post by jrkelly »

tfinniga wrote: post #48
jcurbo wrote: post #6

This exactly matches my use case for RSS. High volume daily websites - like HN - I read directly. I went through a phase where I tried to read HN via RSS (in Google Reader) and for me it wasn't better than just hitting HN directly. But for the kind of sites Marco mentions (which I read most of, actually) that update on a semi-daily or weekly basis, RSS readers are perfect because I don't want to go and visit those pa…

Right, RSS is great for low volume stuff that you don't want to miss. I do have a way of using it productively with high-volume sites. Specifically, I read some of reddit via RSS. Sometimes I go deep into a project, and avoid distractions for quite a while. At the same time, I don't want to miss out on the zeitgeist. So I set up an RSS feed that takes the top n items over a certain period - for example, the top 3 wee…

> So I set up an RSS feed that takes the top n items over a certain period

Oh, I really like that idea. how do you set up that feed?

Re: The power of the RSS reader

#50

Post by mcculley »

I think advising people to delete feeds misses a possible feature that I wish was available in the feed readers I've tried: I would like to mark each feed/URL to tell the feed reader if it is a feed in which I care about seeing every new item. The "number unread" cue/badge should only count the important feeds and not ones where I just want to see the latest content if I have free time.
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