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The power of the RSS reader

marco.org

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Re: The power of the RSS reader

#31

Post by petercooper »

nickm12 wrote: post #25
curtin wrote: post #15

I use to mess with rss and agree with Marco on the purpose of them. Then I found a better solution, just subscribe to some of the awesome curated newsletters out there that do all this for you. HN has one - http://hackernewsletter.com and Peter Cooper's tech focused ones ( https://cooperpress.com/ ) keep you in the loop in a particular stack, plus a lot of others that I've seen. Now I don't have to check anything the…

How do the newsletter curators find interesting long-tail links?

Google Reader... No, only joking ;-)

For my part, it's a lot of browsing, including places like Hacker News and Reddit, and notably a lot of great things get submitted to HN but never get any votes.. those are always the coolest finds. There are also a lot of Twitter users to follow who produce content and tweet about it. I also get a lot of direct e-mails from people who create things, perhaps a third of links come via outreach from authors.. but that's the sort of thing that only happens after you've been doing it a while.

Re: The power of the RSS reader

#33

Post by petercooper »

ruswick wrote: post #19
curtin wrote: post #15

I use to mess with rss and agree with Marco on the purpose of them. Then I found a better solution, just subscribe to some of the awesome curated newsletters out there that do all this for you. HN has one - http://hackernewsletter.com and Peter Cooper's tech focused ones ( https://cooperpress.com/ ) keep you in the loop in a particular stack, plus a lot of others that I've seen. Now I don't have to check anything the…

That may be fine for some, but newsletters are inherently limited by the amount of space they are willing to provide to links, and by their domain, because most letters are topic-specific. While newsletters can support maybe 20 links per week, RSS is adept at handling hundreds if not thousands. Moreover, one of the great benefits of RSS is that it is customizable and one's reading experience pertains specifically and…

If you want to specifically choose your sources, I think you're right. If you're happy with a 'best of' on a topic by topic basis, newsletters can/do work.

With newsletters, one is throwing their reading experience to the mercy of the newsletter editor.

This is part of the appeal for many non-power readers. The majority are not particularly interested in curating or even controlling their sources and are happy to outsource it to either trusted editors (see almost the entire print media or something like Techmeme) or the "cloud" (e.g. Reddit or Hacker News).

Re: The power of the RSS reader

#35

Post by jcurbo »

k3n wrote: post #24
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…

I go back & forth with HN, the reason being that I often star items that I'll want to follow-up on later. For instance, if I read something at home that I want to share with the crew at work, I'll star it. Likewise, if I come across something at work that really doesn't apply to my job, but it's still interesting, I'll star it so I won't forget to read it at home. Granted, those functions are not part & parcel to RSS…

I have that use case also, but I use Instapaper to do it, not just for HN but for anything I read on the Internet (inside of an RSS reader or not).

Re: The power of the RSS reader

#36

Post by itafroma »

roc wrote: post #21

The creator of Instapaper doesn't see the value-add of using an RSS reader to skim the postings of a high-volume site, for readability/usability reasons? That's a curious blind-spot.

He didn't say anything to that effect at all. The only things that come close to that characterization are:

1. "If a site posts many items each day and you barely read any of them, delete that feed." (emphasis mine) If you're skimming all the items in a feed and deriving value from it, this piece of advice doesn't apply.

2. "RSS works best when following a large number of infrequently updated sites." Works best, not only works.

3. "It’s not enough to interleave their posts into a “river” or “stream” paradigm [...] because many of them would get buried in the noise of higher-volume feeds and people’s tweets." It's not enough, not that it's categorically not valuable.

The whole article dovetails nicely with Instapaper's purpose, which is to ensure you don't miss reading articles you find important. Relying solely on a river of news that's filled with high volume sources leads to a high chance of missing stuff you otherwise want to keep close tabs on. Pretty uncontroversial stuff.

Re: The power of the RSS reader

#37

Post by Too »

Just disable read status in your rss-client and the problem is solved. For low frequency sites that you care about you most likely remember their latest headlines anyway. For high frequency sites just watch the headlines roll by, if you happen to be interested in one then click it, otherwise just ignore.

Re: The power of the RSS reader

#38

Post by BenoitEssiambre »

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #27

Exactly! Also the fact that rss enables this kind high quality, narrow domain, low volumes posting makes the web way better. I don't want to read professional writers who have to write their quota whether there is good material to write about or not on that day. They too often focus on gossip and sensationalism. Although I might be entertained briefly, in the end I will not have gained much from reading this type of…

Writing this made me realize that the closing of G Reader might be a huge opportunity for Tumblr.

Tumblr already has RSS features on the publishing side which means they don't lock in their users content in their platform. Imagine if facebook would allow their users's public posts to be viewable in g+. That's what Tumblr does.

Having RSS publishing is a good first step for an open and interoperable social platform. Add to that the ability to see all unread posts from a group of subscriptions and the ability to subscribe to outside rss feeds within Tumblr and you got yourself a very good social network/feed reader/blogging platform.

Maybe the kids are on to something.

I wonder if there is a business model for a social network that keeps posts in the open and encourages consumptions from outside platforms through rss.

Re: The power of the RSS reader

#39

Post by roc »

itafroma wrote: post #36
roc wrote: post #21

The creator of Instapaper doesn't see the value-add of using an RSS reader to skim the postings of a high-volume site, for readability/usability reasons? That's a curious blind-spot.

He didn't say anything to that effect at all. The only things that come close to that characterization are: 1. "If a site posts many items each day and you barely read any of them , delete that feed." (emphasis mine) If you're skimming all the items in a feed and deriving value from it, this piece of advice doesn't apply. 2. "RSS works best when following a large number of infrequently updated sites." Works best, not…

> "You shouldn’t come back to hundreds or thousands of unread articles." ... "you shouldn’t subscribe to feeds that would generate that kind of unread volume." ... "you’re using it in a way that’s not good for you."

These sorts of prescriptive statements don't read as "I see the value others may derive from other use cases." They explicitly read as "I don't see the value" and "I've looked and I don't think it exists."

Further, using an RSS reader to skim a frequently-updated site, of which I read only a few articles, is precisely the point.

High quantities of postings exacerbates the flaws of their designs. But with RSS, it's easy to skim pages of headlines. After a long weekend I can deal with hundreds of unread articles precisely because I'm interested in so little.

If there were aggregating services that delivered what I was looking for, I'd certainly prefer that. But I haven't found them.

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