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I Still Use RSS

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Re: I Still Use RSS

#101

Post by avian »

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…

I have about the same distribution of RSS clients on my blog as well. Feedly seems to be the largest, with about 10x reported subscribers than their competitors. Newsblur, The Old Reader and Inoreader are all about the same, but far behind. Then there's a sea of various self-hosted readers like the TinyTinyRSS and desktop programs.

Note that these are all self-reported numbers from the user agent string - as far as I can tell, Feedly might be inflating their numbers to give an impression of a large user base and to appear on top of lists like this.

Re: I Still Use RSS

#102

Post by devlopr »

kevincox wrote: post #89
Blikkentrekker wrote: post #80

Is RSS really so obscure as the site suggests? Every website I am interested in updates from provides a feed. Apparently YouTube content creators receive more money if they have more subscribers, but I don't subscribe and simply use the RSS feed; it's easier. Perhaps YouTube also factors in the number of RSS requæsts they receive.

IIUC YouTube compensation is based entirely off the number of ads watched/clicked through on your videos. (Saving special one-off contracts that YouTube may offer)

In order to reach a level where youtube would compensate a user you need to reach 1,000 subscribers.

If everyone used rss feeds new creators would never get paid.

Re: I Still Use RSS

#103

Post by johndhowell »

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.…

"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"

I know for me, I didn't know what RSS truly was until like.. last year? I remember seeing the icon and all that on various sites growing up but I never clicked them as I didn't know it was a straight feed of content.

Whereas last year I read some article or blog about it dying and I decided to look it up. Now it's the only way I read or watch any content becuase it's exactly what I want: straight content with no bs.

Re: I Still Use RSS

#104

Post by coldpie »

royjacobs wrote: post #7

I'm happily using Feedly ever since Google Reader got shut down. I genuinely would be missing out on a lot of content if people would stop providing RSS feeds, especially for blogs that only update very sporadically.

I pay for Feedly not because I'm interested in any of the Pro features, but because Google Reader taught me that you should pay for things you like so they will stick around.

Re: I Still Use RSS

#105

Post by jamesponddotco »

I think my digital life would be a mess without an RSS feed reader. Because of its existence I do not need to touch Twitter, Reddit, YouTube[1], or any Mastodon instance, for example, as I can just have the updates that interest me from these networks in the comfort of my Feedbin[2] feed.

While Hacker News does not provide an interface that notifies you when someone replies to you, hnrss.org provides an RSS feed for that[3], so I know when I get a reply. I also have a separate feed for Ask HN[4] and Show HN[5], so I never miss anything that may interest me, even if other people do not care about it. Heck, I found this post because it showed up on my feed reader!

As a system administrator, I can use RSS to keep up to date with security issues in Ubuntu Server[6], WordPress[7], and CVEs in general, but also to follow commits in SourceHut repositories[8] and releases for pieces of software I use daily, but do not have repositories for my Linux distribution.

I sure as heck hope it never go away.

[1] In the YouTube case, with RSS, mpv, and youtube-dl, I never even have to see their web interface.

[2] https://feedbin.com/

[3] https://hnrss.org/replies?id=${YOURUSERNAME}

[4] https://hnrss.org/ask

[5] https://hnrss.org/show

[6] https://usn.ubuntu.com/usn/rss.xml

[7] https://www.exploit-db.com/rss.xml

[8] https://git.sr.ht/~${USERNAME}/${REPO}/log/rss.xml

Re: I Still Use RSS

#106

Post by avian »

jlelse wrote: post #97
justusthane wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So feedly tells you how many subscribers they have when they hit your feed. That's neat of them.

Not only Feedly does this. Most of those feed readers do it.

In fact, Feedly was the only large centralized feed reader that didn't do subscriber count reporting via UA string for the longest time. They made you do a GET request on some API endpoint if you wanted to get your subscriber count.

They implemented it some time back, but it's still kind of buggy - at least for my blog. Two or three different IPs periodically do a GET on my feed URL with the Feedly UA and they all report different subscriber counts.

Re: I Still Use RSS

#108

Post by k1m »

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #96
k1m wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Are you also behind the other fivefilters.org tools? I use Push to Kindle often and I've paid for the Android version. Thanks!

Thank you. Happy to hear it's been useful for you. And yes, I work on Push to Kindle too.

Re: I Still Use RSS

#109

Post by spians »

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #80

Is RSS really so obscure as the site suggests? Every website I am interested in updates from provides a feed. Apparently YouTube content creators receive more money if they have more subscribers, but I don't subscribe and simply use the RSS feed; it's easier. Perhaps YouTube also factors in the number of RSS requæsts they receive.

As a maintainer of an RSS reader app which has its own inventory for suggested feeds, one of the uphill battles is sudden removal of RSS support from various sites. I have a list of feeds which are updated once a month and everytime some sites (both niche and big ones) drop RSS support (Reuters and YouTube removing option to export subscriptions as OPML are major blows in last few months).

The reason for these removals is also never given. If you look at those sites now, you'd feel RSS support never existed and nobody used them. So the reason for removal could be anyone's guess. Perhaps RSS icon didn't look good with other social media icons on home page, server serving the RSS feed shut down and no one bothered to check, forgot to add RSS option in new design/refactor or some PM didn't find RSS feed engaging enough and actively killed it.

Re: I Still Use RSS

#110

Post by mthwsjc_ »

> GitHub allows you to add an activity feed of your followed accounts/organisations by clicking the feed icon at the bottom of your account page. - wow!
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