Years ago I started using RSS to consume content and stay on top of what's going on. Today I find that there are still an unbelievable amount of people who don't understand the concept of pulling in content to a place like Google Reader as opposed to individually visiting sites (I'm talking about people outside of our techie world). I mean, RSS isn't THAT complicated, right? Then I hear spats about "RSS is dying" or "RSS is a thing of the past"... Really? I think RSS is one of the best things since sliced bread. I don't think social will overtake the need for RSS, so I'm just not quite sure I understand the nay-sayers. Care to chime in?
Can someone please explain why some people don't like RSS feeds?
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Re: Can someone please explain why some people don't like RSS feeds?
#2I think some people just dont understand em. Or the concept of feeds. Maybe cuz Apple didn't"invent" it :p Some people are convinced that you dont get full stories or images etc, which I guess can be be true but seems rarer these days. I like to browse the headers & then if I still need to visit the site I can. Saves so much time wasting surfing each site when you consume many!
Re: Can someone please explain why some people don't like RSS feeds?
#3I love RSS.
I like it so much I built an RSS search engine.
It's still a work in progress but I will be adding several new features soon.
For any of you that need jobs this is an easy way to find them:
http://rssident.com/mash/?t=job&e=java
http://rssident.com/mash/?t=job&e=ruby
http://rssident.com/mash/?t=job&e=php
Or by individual feed:
http://rssident.com/feeds/?t=job&e=java
Right now it's only indexing feeds I added but soon anyone will able to add whatever feeds they want.
Re: Can someone please explain why some people don't like RSS feeds?
#4I think some people just dont understand em. Or the concept of feeds. Maybe cuz Apple didn't"invent" it :p Some people are convinced that you dont get full stories or images etc, which I guess can be be true but seems rarer these days. I like to browse the headers & then if I still need to visit the site I can. Saves so much time wasting surfing each site when you consume many!
And yet some people who can't get to grips with the idea of feeds happily signup to e-mail lists that promise "an e-mail every time I post to the site". It seems odd.
Re: Can someone please explain why some people don't like RSS feeds?
#5I think some people just dont understand em. Or the concept of feeds. Maybe cuz Apple didn't"invent" it :p Some people are convinced that you dont get full stories or images etc, which I guess can be be true but seems rarer these days. I like to browse the headers & then if I still need to visit the site I can. Saves so much time wasting surfing each site when you consume many!
And yet some people who can't get to grips with the idea of feeds happily signup to e-mail lists that promise "an e-mail every time I post to the site". It seems odd.
I know!? It IS odd. Such a simple concept that gets seemingly butchered with ignorance.
Re: Can someone please explain why some people don't like RSS feeds?
#6People love the concept behind RSS. They just want it served in an easily digestible way, which is: social media.
Re: Can someone please explain why some people don't like RSS feeds?
#7I like RSS, and my usage has gradually expanded over the years. But I can see several reasons for slowed uptake: I haven't seen new coverage of RSS such as "It's fun and easy to use RSS to collect your favorite blogs and episodic media in one place" articles for years, so it's likely very much out of the non-technical public's eye. It has become a set-and-forget commodity for media consumers who do know about it (but who don't proselytize). Getting started requires a bit of tedium - finding a decent client, copy/pasting URLs, or getting a browser to properly fire up that client to subscribe. Even finding the RSS icon/link on many content websites has become annoyingly difficult. And no blogs, podcasts or vlogs even mention "Subscribe to our RSS feed" anymore, only facebook, twitter, and maybe their website URL.
(Though I see its value for text, Google Reader (web) is weak for non-text media: it's off the main Google menubar, has no auto download, and so acts merely as a hidden, online-only index to updated content. I highly value downloading for reading/playback offline (or frequent 0-bars situations).)
A chunk of RSS's potential userbase just gravitates to what they use every day: Twitter, since "feeds" work much the same, with the addition of comments and a promotion mechanism (retweet or not).
Just thinking aloud.
Re: Can someone please explain why some people don't like RSS feeds?
#8I love RSS... But I hate the sheer volume of noise and repetitive shit that gets rehashed over and over again across numerous feeds. I subscribe to a large variety of topics too, not just startups and technical news. It happens in every group and the VOLUME of repetitive crap is annoying to deal with.
Social media, when properly set and curated, have been slightly better at filtering some of the noise (albeit there are some repetition) but then lacks the volume of good stuff that RSS goes over that is being missed.
I need a solution in between.
Re: Can someone please explain why some people don't like RSS feeds?
#9RSS would be fantastic but the vast majority of sites that still bother to offer it gimp the crap out of their RSS feeds for advertising purposes (eg. RSS feed only gives tiny snippets of the full content and a link to the site so you'll click through and they'll get advertising views), making it basically worthless.
Re: Can someone please explain why some people don't like RSS feeds?
#10RSS would be fantastic but the vast majority of sites that still bother to offer it gimp the crap out of their RSS feeds for advertising purposes (eg. RSS feed only gives tiny snippets of the full content and a link to the site so you'll click through and they'll get advertising views), making it basically worthless.
Many things would be fantastic if they didn't have a fatal flaw; for RSS, it is that the mechanism, while something no one seems willing to pay for (a la $1/month to subscribe via RSS), is designed to undermine the only monetization model content producers normally can manage.