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Re: Blog Feeds

#41

Post by a10c »

nicbou wrote: post #31
silcoon wrote: post #20

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 con…

Instapaper and Feedly work for me. Instapaper is the main thing and Feedly a thing I check occasionally for the blogs I love.

i’ve tried a paid Instapaper plan a few times but always end up leaving because their reader view very regularly misses entire sections of articles

Re: Blog Feeds

#42

Post by sameline »

mustaphah wrote: post #17

> 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…

https://kill-the-newsletter.com is a great way to turn email newsletters into RSS.

Re: Blog Feeds

#43

Post by esseph »

pedalpete wrote: post #35
esseph wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just speaking for myself here... The last thing I want is another service with an algorithm. RSS by itself is devoid of that, which is an appealing feature. Does everything have to be a fucking product?????

Nobody is telling you that you have to use it. How do you overcome the discoverability problem with RSS. It isn't a "product", it's a solution to a problem.

I still don't know what the problem is you're complaining about.

I find things I like, I add them to RSS reader. I don't have thousands or hundreds of things in there, maybe a few dozen.

"Make it easy for users to find things" - if they can find a website, they can find an RSS feed. I'm sure any LLM with Deep Research would be great for that.

Re: Blog Feeds

#44

Post by AlexAplin »

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 of the major hosted feed readers (Inoreader, Feedly, Feedbin) include subscriber count in their user agent. I usually run a filter on requests to the feed links in my access logs to get an idea of how they're changing. Anecdotally, my subcriber count reaches into triple digits with only those counts, but I've never gotten email from readers and generally only get feedback promoting new posts on socials. The counts are about as nebulous as follower counts, which is to say most people probably subscribe/follow and forget.

Re: Blog Feeds

#45

Post by pavo-etc »

leakycap wrote: post #11
dist-epoch wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This could be done using RSS and feed:// uri scheme if it was more popular.

https://notes.zachmanson.com/feed-uri-scheme/

Re: Blog Feeds

#46

Post by mikepk »

This is a little triggering :) Reminds me of all the promise back in 2005 when I built my first startup Grazr. It was: - a widget that was a mini RSS reader that let visitors to your site read the RSS feeds you subscribed to on your site - a way to share your collection of RSS feeds dynamically - a way to copy / remix those collections - a way to subscribe to those lists dynamically (if they had a dynamic blogroll or whatever) - a processing and filtering engine to allow merging collections of feeds together into a single stream - Javascript on the server (in 2005 :) ) run using embedded script tags in the OPML / XML blogrolls to create even more dynamic blogs

The net effect was you could make your own news feeds / timelines and use code to control how they were filtered / combined / etc... It was crazy powerful (for 2005) and I still miss it _today_ since it had the dynamism of the news feed, some of the social aspect, and total control since there was no algorithm other than your and the people's who's list you subscribed to curation and any code you ran against it.

Not a lot left from those long ago days but I did find one slightly-cringy video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45DSrU23sPI

:)

Re: Blog Feeds

#47

Post by geerlingguy »

re wrote: post #36

> The idea is to create another page on your blog that has all the RSS feeds you're subscribed to. By keeping this public and always up to date, someone can visit your page, find someone new and follow them. Perhaps that person also has a feeds page, and the cycle continues until there is a natural and organic network of people all sharing with each other. So if you have a blog, consider making a feeds page and shari…

And even better, there used to be a concept of "pingback", back before it was just abused by spammers, where you could connect blog posts together (the OG "react" medium) through a ping mechanism that was at least in Wordpress, not sure about other platforms.

But I found a ton of great blogs just scanning through other people's blogrolls.

Re: Blog Feeds

#48

Post by chrisweekly »

a10c wrote: post #41
nicbou wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instapaper and Feedly work for me. Instapaper is the main thing and Feedly a thing I check occasionally for the blogs I love.

i’ve tried a paid Instapaper plan a few times but always end up leaving because their reader view very regularly misses entire sections of articles

Try Readwise Reader

Re: Blog Feeds

#49

Post by chrisweekly »

esseph wrote: post #43
pedalpete wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is telling you that you have to use it. How do you overcome the discoverability problem with RSS. It isn't a "product", it's a solution to a problem.

I still don't know what the problem is you're complaining about. I find things I like, I add them to RSS reader. I don't have thousands or hundreds of things in there, maybe a few dozen. "Make it easy for users to find things" - if they can find a website, they can find an RSS feed. I'm sure any LLM with Deep Research would be great for that.

"I find things I like" is the discoverabity problem right there. Where do you find them?

Re: Blog Feeds

#50

Post by colesantiago »

> What about monetization?

> You certainly can try to find ways to monetize through platforms like Substack, it's truly up to you. The key is building a network of people who want to talk together!

Hmm. This is one of the reasons why this won't take off unless the blog is on Substack and people are making money out of it.

But then again power laws are brutal, which is why Substack has got good discovery, ordinary wordpress/ghost/jekyll/ssg websites and blogs with RSS don't.

There needs to be a way to gate web / RSS content + discoverability behind hit for those who don't want to go onto Substack, especially now with AI crawlers scraping blog content from authors for free.

Otherwise the only way to make money from your writing would be to use Substack.

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