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11–20 of 76 posts

Re: Blog Feeds

#11

Post by leakycap »

dist-epoch wrote: post #9
leakycap wrote: post #2

Social media is easy, yet users commonly need help because they simply can't manage a login/password... I don't think this DIY approach is simple enough to get traction I could see a service where you paste in a URL of anything you find interesting, then that service going around and finding an RSS feed or newsletter signup and doing it for them... maybe taking off

Or, as we call it, a "Follow" button.

Who is "we"?

Whoever "we" is doesn't seem to see the distinction between what is being described here & above and a follow button.

Re: Blog Feeds

#12

Post by stared »

Though, it kind of works that you keep adding blogs and blogs, until it turns out that RSS feed is mess. Maybe no clickbaits or ads, but still density of posts I want to read goes down.

Do you know any good solution, where there is collaborative filtering or RSS (bonus points for open, tweakable algorithm) + some AI with custom prompt to give me top recommendations?

Something where I am in the charge of the algorithm, not the other way around.

Re: Blog Feeds

#13

Post by chrisamiller »

stared wrote: post #12

Though, it kind of works that you keep adding blogs and blogs, until it turns out that RSS feed is mess. Maybe no clickbaits or ads, but still density of posts I want to read goes down. Do you know any good solution, where there is collaborative filtering or RSS (bonus points for open, tweakable algorithm) + some AI with custom prompt to give me top recommendations? Something where I am in the charge of the algorithm…

I don't mean this to sound snarky, but if a blog doesn't have a good ratio of signal to noise, you just unsubscribe from the feed.

The solution is to be okay with missing some things instead of trying to drink from the firehose.

Re: Blog Feeds

#14

Post by pedalpete »

The problem with blog feeds is the action required by the user to decide what blogs to follow, and then the desire to go to a different app to read them.

But this strikes me as a problem that can be solved, and potentially already has been.

If I go to a newsreeder the first time, it's empty. I have to decide what to follow.

If you can get me to add a few blogs of interest, you start understanding what I want to read.

I can then subscribe and follow, just like I would on twitter, and you can present new stuff to me, so I'm never showing up without something new.

I suspect this is something like what substack is doing, but that means all the blogs have to be on substack.

I never go to substack to browse, I go there when a link sends me there.

If there was a service that I as a blog-writer can submit my feed to, and that service is managing the promotion of my blog to the right readers, that would be a benefit, and I wouldn't feel locked in.

I'm sure this has been done, why did it fail?

Re: Blog Feeds

#15

Post by stared »

chrisamiller wrote: post #13
stared wrote: post #12

Though, it kind of works that you keep adding blogs and blogs, until it turns out that RSS feed is mess. Maybe no clickbaits or ads, but still density of posts I want to read goes down. Do you know any good solution, where there is collaborative filtering or RSS (bonus points for open, tweakable algorithm) + some AI with custom prompt to give me top recommendations? Something where I am in the charge of the algorithm…

I don't mean this to sound snarky, but if a blog doesn't have a good ratio of signal to noise, you just unsubscribe from the feed. The solution is to be okay with missing some things instead of trying to drink from the firehose.

Maybe it is one way to go.

But I had a similar though with newspapers. There are quite a few I like. Yet, there are more articles in one that I can read - especially when I want to have other sources as well. So yeah, if there were only a handful of good blogs, it would be the case. But there is a long tail of interesting stuff there.

Anyway, even for the Hacker News, I would like to filter a bit, so to have feed like the hackernewsletter (which I like a lot), but profiled more to my tastes.

Re: Blog Feeds

#16

Post by firefoxd »

kh_hk wrote: post #10

I write on my blog, but I am not sure who I am writing for. Which is fine, because in the end I write for myself. Years ago you would get comments, posts would get linked (remember pingbacks?). Maybe as time progressed I started writing more niche things that reach nobody, or maybe that web started disintegrating. Hope it comes back, but I will not hold my breath. I will keep posting though.

Some people have been following my blog for over 10 years. The only reason I know is because someone decided to email me on a random Tuesday. You'd be surprised what you find when you look through your logs.

Re: Blog Feeds

#17

Post by mustaphah »

> RSS is actually already familiar to you if you have ever subscribed to a newsletter [...]

RSS is far better than a (digest) newsletter; you can browse individual posts at your own pace, keep some unread for later, and revisit them across sessions.

With newsletters, you either read the whole thing in one sitting or leave the email unarchived forever.

If only every newsletter had an RSS feed. But of course they don't - can't show you ads!

Re: Blog Feeds

#18

Post by cosmicgadget »

leakycap wrote: post #2

Social media is easy, yet users commonly need help because they simply can't manage a login/password... I don't think this DIY approach is simple enough to get traction I could see a service where you paste in a URL of anything you find interesting, then that service going around and finding an RSS feed or newsletter signup and doing it for them... maybe taking off

I'm working on something similar, rather than finding an RSS feed it simply finds blog posts (or personal site pages) that are similar to your query. Probably a next iteration would be to create RSS feeds from the dataset.

Re: Blog Feeds

#20

Post by silcoon »

I thought about a similar problems because I always find really interesting blogs (mostly on HN) but I don't have a real place to store them, so they get lost when I close the tab. I can save them in the favorites but I'm not used to check favorites regularly.

Feeds are a tangent solution because they give you only the new stuff. Feeds transform blogs into social media platforms where what matter is the new fresh content, ready to "feed" the algorithm. But blogs and personal sites are different. High quality content is usually written in a single article, maybe in the past, and it will not be shown on your feed.

Actually I judge a blog on what's already written in there, so I want to read more articles but maybe just not right now. If I add the blog to my RSS reader I would only read future content.

Another patch to this problem is Instapaper. I can save there the most interesting articles and read them later, but the entire-blog view is missing.

I would like to have a way (platform) where I can save a blog and read all/some articles, with a standard formatting (custom blogs are nice but not always comfortable to read) and not having a default sorting for recent articles.

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