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Making RSS More Fun

matduggan.com

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Re: Making RSS More Fun

#61

Post by dewey »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #49
sebtron wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I get the impression this person is using RSS reader wrong. Or is there really a culture of people you are using RSS like a youtube-channel, consuming everything from beginning to end? For me the purpose of RSS is to get the newest headlines, choose the interesting articles and skip the rest. This means there is a limited list of items to check each day, and a finishing line. Why would the author's use be the wrong…

RSS has been traditionally used like an email client rather than a streaming service. You don't read every email, some go straight to spam or the trash bin. RSS is a time saver, not a time waster. I can see that some feeds, like serializartions or low-volume/high quality content, is desirable to be consumed in its entirety, but the 80/20 principle seems to also apply to RSS feeds too in general. Specially if your RSS…

A bit weird to make blanket statements about a tool like that. Some people read all emails, some don’t. Just like some people only subscribe to people’s personal blogs and want to read all of them.

Some might want to use it as a news aggregator and quickly browse through headlines. There no right or wrong usage of an RSS reader or “traditional usage”.

Re: Making RSS More Fun

#62

Post by greenwallnorway »

dundercoder wrote: post #54

I would love to use RSS to disseminate updates I’m working on, especially to my family. But my family wouldn’t know what RSS was, let alone use a reader. Are there ways my family could already be using RSS and not know? I don’t want to try to get them to install yet another app or use another service because the friction will prevent them from doing it.

What about email?

Email is a cousin to RSS - everyone has their email feed.

Senders push to an email inbox, rather than readers pulling feeds into an inbox.

Re: Making RSS More Fun

#63

Post by al_borland »

GaryBluto wrote: post #51
al_borland wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Digg has recently re-launched. It’s in beta currently. I got in a couple weeks ago.

Unfortunately it just looks to be a Reddit clone now.

It's a joint effort between Kevin Rose (Digg founder) and Alexis Ohanian (Reddit co-founder).

There is definitely some Reddit influence, but Reddit was also heavily influenced by Digg to start with. Listening to the users, it's hard to know which way it's going to go. There are a lot of people who don't want it to be the new Reddit and want to make sure the same problems aren't repeated. At the same time, some Reddit culture is coming over (with a bit of push back) and some people seem to want Digg to have all the stuff they liked from Reddit, which would end up as a Reddit clone.

I'm hoping it will be successful, as there needs to be a better Reddit alternative than what exists now and the Fediverse isn't getting the job done. Only time will tell.

Re: Making RSS More Fun

#66

Post by ASalazarMX »

dewey wrote: post #61
ASalazarMX wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RSS has been traditionally used like an email client rather than a streaming service. You don't read every email, some go straight to spam or the trash bin. RSS is a time saver, not a time waster. I can see that some feeds, like serializartions or low-volume/high quality content, is desirable to be consumed in its entirety, but the 80/20 principle seems to also apply to RSS feeds too in general. Specially if your RSS…

A bit weird to make blanket statements about a tool like that. Some people read all emails, some don’t. Just like some people only subscribe to people’s personal blogs and want to read all of them. Some might want to use it as a news aggregator and quickly browse through headlines. There no right or wrong usage of an RSS reader or “traditional usage”.

As RSS was being widespread around 2010, this is what most people said they were using it like, at least in my experience. It was the time when we still didn't have great spam filters, and people were used to receive and discard many emails without reading them.

RSS was also frequently compared to discussion forums, where you also want to efficiently ignore non-relevant content. RSS gave us the power to ignore the budding information overload.

Re: Making RSS More Fun

#67

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #49
sebtron wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I get the impression this person is using RSS reader wrong. Or is there really a culture of people you are using RSS like a youtube-channel, consuming everything from beginning to end? For me the purpose of RSS is to get the newest headlines, choose the interesting articles and skip the rest. This means there is a limited list of items to check each day, and a finishing line. Why would the author's use be the wrong…

RSS has been traditionally used like an email client rather than a streaming service. You don't read every email, some go straight to spam or the trash bin. RSS is a time saver, not a time waster. I can see that some feeds, like serializartions or low-volume/high quality content, is desirable to be consumed in its entirety, but the 80/20 principle seems to also apply to RSS feeds too in general. Specially if your RSS…

IIRC, Gmail at one time offered mailbox as RSS feed many years ago

Re: Making RSS More Fun

#68

Post by 627467 »

Feeed[0] nailed the ux for a rss reader (and other type of feeds) by having a local algorithm that keeps the main feed diverse yet short no anxiety of unread count. Unfortunately it's iOS only and I have not seen open source RSS readers on android that take similar approach. Many support a "today" tab which does help in keeping the task of catching up more focused but if you follow high volume feeds that post a lot you end up having to scroll alot to see variety of content.

[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/feeeed-rss-reader-and-more/id1...

Re: Making RSS More Fun

#69

Post by desireco42 »

I had similar idea long time ago during StumbleUpon and it was called OneRandomSite...

It was meant to help founders promote their startups or something.

Didn't work out for me.

Re: Making RSS More Fun

#70

Post by Semaphor »

PurpleRamen wrote: post #7

> I rarely want to read all of a websites content from beginning to end I get the impression this person is using RSS reader wrong. Or is there really a culture of people you are using RSS like a youtube-channel, consuming everything from beginning to end? For me the purpose of RSS is to get the newest headlines, choose the interesting articles and skip the rest. This means there is a limited list of items to check e…

Why am I using it wrong when I only subscribe to interesting feeds? I read everything because I subscribe to stuff I want to read.

And I've been using RSS since the days when there were fights over atom vs RSS.

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