It's time to head back to RSS? • Hacker News Board

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#301

Post by alexandros » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 3:19 PM UTC

drdeadringer wrote: post #299

I seem to have missed the "abandon all RSS" movement, which doesn't surprise me. I am missing That One Puzzle Piece which enables me to understand why people ditched RSS in the first place. I'd appreciate enlightenment.

Google reader was introduced, made it look like it would be there forever and cost nothing, which killed any alternatives. Then Google killed reader in favor of Google+. At that point, there was no good reader, and even with not-as-good alternatives like feedly, a lot of people didn't feel like setting things up again. As a result, the whole ecosystem was knocked out of balance and never recovered.

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#302

Post by bogomipz » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 3:20 PM UTC

singingfish wrote: post #107

RSS never went away. Podcasting has made careers (e.g. deboarah francis-white, roman mars, andy & helen zaltzman, ollie mann and many others). The technological underpinning of podcasting is entirely RSS. And it ain't going away, or getting embraced and extended any time soon.

>"The technological underpinning of podcasting is entirely RSS."

Can you elaborate on this? How are they related?

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#303

Post by bogomipz » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 3:25 PM UTC

toasterlovin wrote: post #5

If you haven’t tried RSS as your main mode of information consumption in a while, you should give it a shot. I went all-in on RSS recently and it’s been great. Way more thoughtful, long form content. Smaller dose information sources (Twitter, etc.) are useful in their own way, but I’ve found that the amount of time required to create a unit of media is a pretty good reverse indicator of how likely it is to use the ba…

> Way more thoughtful, long form content."

Isn't RSS the same content as on the publishers page or site though? Maybe I am misinterpreting you comment?

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#304

Post by Macha » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 3:25 PM UTC

andybak wrote: post #184

walshemj wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you just need to start using a real MUA like outlook or thunderbird and drop gmail

I dropped both of those in favour of Gmail (and now Inbox) years ago much to my delight. What am I missing?

Features I've found missing from Gmail:

* A decent bulk actions interface.

* Threading

* Filter on email headers

* Apply rules based on message age (e.g. twitch "is now live" messages are irrelevant after 1 day.

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#305

Post by mandelbulb » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 3:33 PM UTC

SimeVidas wrote: post #298

theclaw wrote: post #278

I've tried Feedly but my goodness, the corporate language is such a turn off. I just want a feed reader, I don't want to "Fuel your team's success," "Enrich articles with unique insights," "Automate your content workflows," "Reinforce your digital brand". These features may be cool and useful, but the way they're sold makes me gag. I used my ad blocker to remove the "Well done!" that appears when everything is marked…

I’m viewing RSS on feedly.com for years. I just checked the features in Feedly Pro. It says that the free tier is limited to 100 sources, while Pro gets you unlimited sources. What does this mean? I’ve already added over 500 sources and it seems to work fine.

You had the account before they put the limit in place.

As for the parent comment, read my two posts here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16721859

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#306

Post by toasterlovin » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 3:36 PM UTC

bogomipz wrote: post #303

toasterlovin wrote: post #5

If you haven’t tried RSS as your main mode of information consumption in a while, you should give it a shot. I went all-in on RSS recently and it’s been great. Way more thoughtful, long form content. Smaller dose information sources (Twitter, etc.) are useful in their own way, but I’ve found that the amount of time required to create a unit of media is a pretty good reverse indicator of how likely it is to use the ba…

> Way more thoughtful, long form content." Isn't RSS the same content as on the publishers page or site though? Maybe I am misinterpreting you comment?

Yeah, it’s the same content. It’s just that if you switch to consuming it via RSS, you don’t get sucked into all the bite sized media that permeates the web.

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#307

Post by fulldecent » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 3:40 PM UTC

A visitor that comes to your site via social is MUCH more valuable than someone that comes via RSS. The economics of this reality are what removed RSS from the limelight.

Dear publishers, let's fix this. Whenever you publish a blog post, etc. please syndicate it on social and then go back to your site to add "DISCUSS THIS ON TWITTER/whatever AT https://t.co/aesou02". Make sure that this also syndicates to RSS.

Dear pubsubbers, let's fix this. In your reader software, please lint these special links and show the discussion below the news. We know you want to get into the content discovery business -- this is the first step.

See the Slashdot RSS feed as a good example, they inline the discussion right in the feed.

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#308

Post by sir_brickalot » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 3:41 PM UTC

I miss Sage++ (Higmmers Edition). [1]

Sidebar RSS reader for Firefox. It was perfect for my use case. (Now its dead due to WebExtension)

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/sagepp-higmmers-...

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#309

Post by fulldecent » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 3:43 PM UTC

drdeadringer wrote: post #299

I seem to have missed the "abandon all RSS" movement, which doesn't surprise me. I am missing That One Puzzle Piece which enables me to understand why people ditched RSS in the first place. I'd appreciate enlightenment.

The (perceived?) reality is that social grows your user base and RSS doesn't.

Publishers care about growth more than serving existing customers.

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#310

Post by criddell » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 3:44 PM UTC

theclaw wrote: post #278

I've tried Feedly but my goodness, the corporate language is such a turn off. I just want a feed reader, I don't want to "Fuel your team's success," "Enrich articles with unique insights," "Automate your content workflows," "Reinforce your digital brand". These features may be cool and useful, but the way they're sold makes me gag. I used my ad blocker to remove the "Well done!" that appears when everything is marked…

I think it was Feedly that has sent me a survey asking what I want them to work on. My reply was that it does its job just fine. Reduce the team to a skeleton crew and slip into maintenance mode.

It seems dangerous to keep expanding the feature set because you are just expanding your future maintenance budget.

I don't think I've ever shared a single thing from my news reader. I don't want people sending me stuff so it only seems right that I don't spam them.