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"People" keep rattling on about how RSS needs to be revived. Do these people live in some sort of alternative reality where: - The guardian - BBC - Reuters

"People" keep rattling on about how RSS needs to be revived. Do these people live in some sort of alternative reality where: - The guardian - BBC - Reuters - Ars Technica - LWN - Hacker News and a fuck ton others don't have an RSS feed? Or some sort or reality where Flym (or the myriads of RSS apps) don't exist? Because I sure as hell don't.

jklinger410 8y ago
I think this uptick in RSS articles is just a bunch of journalists trying to inspire developers to do something more interesting with the tech.
- dabockster 8y ago
  This isn't necessarily a bad thing.
vanderZwan 8y ago
You're mixing up websites who provide RSS with end-users who are supposed to make use of it.
jjrh 8y ago
Main reason I don't exclusively use RSS (like I used to) is tons and tons of websites just provide a couple lines in the RSS feed and not the entire article. Super annoying.
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  That's always been a complaint about RSS going back to its original age, the balance between short summaries and full articles; ads/pageviews/analytics versus "content is king". Have you tried an RSS Reader with an embedded web view for those types of sites? (I use Newsblur and it has a really neat view where it shows the original blog/page and uses a bit of logic to track your cursor to mark as read articles you read directly on the originating site in a frame inside of Newsblur. It doesn't work for all sites but the ones it does work for can be pretty magic. That said, I'm an old school "river" user and simply have a habit workflow that heavily makes use of keyboard shortcuts to open new tabs and close them quickly.)
- k1m 8y ago
  I work on a service that tries to generate new full-text feeds from these partial ones. You can try it out at http://fivefilters.org/content-only/ http://fivefilters.org/content-only/
- Spivak 8y ago
  What's the alternative though? The same will be true on all other aggregators.
frooxie 8y ago
A few years ago, my favorite writers and artists had personal blogs. Today, many of them have moved to Instagram, Twitter and/or Facebook, making them inconvenient or impossible to follow using RSS. Apart from the migration to walled gardens, I also think it's a problem that 99% of web users haven't heard of RSS.
- thirdsun 8y ago
  I really don't understand those artists and writers you mention. Why on earth would they not use their own platform to present their content? This doesn't remove the ability to promote and share your content elsewhere. Content creators really can have it both ways. Publish on your own site and link to, share or duplicate that content on Facebook, Instagram, Medium, Twitter, RSS, Soundcloud and any other service that may be relevant to your audience.
  - dnzm 8y ago
    > I really don't understand those artists and writers you mention. Why on earth would they not use their own platform to present their content? Ease of use. Plenty of folks don't have the skills to set things up and keep them humming along, nor do they have the funds to play someone else to do it for them. So they hand over a bit of control in exchange for a platform that's set up and kept up to date. You may argue that they're giving up too much control, and I'd agree with you, but that's not how most (non-technical) users see things.
  - frooxie 8y ago
    > Why on earth would they not use their own platform to present their content? I know one of them personally, and I think in her case, she may have had a few hundred people following her art blog, while on Instagram, she quickly amassed over 100,000 followers, so when she stopped updating the blog, she lost less than 1% of her fans. It comes down to people knowing how to follow Instagram/Facebook accounts, while they haven't even heard of RSS.
    - thirdsun 8y ago
LoSboccacc 8y ago
Ars technica only provides a blurb trough rss and iirc no topic filtered rss, hardly a good or usable solution if one has to get out and find content outside the reader
- acdha 8y ago
  Subscribers get full text and they offer per-section feeds. Beyond that, a full-featured client can implement either of those features. I use Newsblur.com which allows you to control whether you see the feed's description or the readability-filtered page, and you have a training system to up/down flag authors, tags, and arbitrary text.
padthai 8y ago
Here is the RSS feed of Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/rss https://news.ycombinator.com/rss Edit: Every single of those webpages have an RSS feed. Ars Technica: http://feeds.arstechnica.com/arstechnica/index/ http://feeds.arstechnica.com/arstechnica/index/ The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/rss https://www.theguardian.com/uk/rss LWN: https://lwn.net/headlines/newrss https://lwn.net/headlines/newrss BBC: http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/video_and_audio/news_front_page/rss.xml?edition=uk http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/video_and_audio/news_front_page... Reuters: http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/worldNews http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/worldNews
- nambit 8y ago
  Maybe you misunderstood what he was saying. He was saying every one of those pages already has an RSS feed so there's nothing to "revive"
  - padthai 8y ago
    I completely misunderstood what he said. I agree with him, I consume most of my news using RSS and even in pages that do not have RSS (like soundcloud) there is a RSS server somewhere serving the feed.
- dynamoa 8y ago
  Is it me or is BBC's feed outdated or broken?
  - Jaruzel 8y ago
    It's you. The BBC feeds work fine... ... however, they do 'touch' a lot of the articles during the week so the order they appear in the feed keeps changing.
VectorLock 8y ago
Yes, RSS still exists. So does Myspace.
- Spivak 8y ago
  RSS exists and is ubiquitous on the web outside of a few large players. It doesn't have the consumer mind-share but nothing about that hinders your personal RSS experience.
calibas 8y ago
In my experience, the average internet user has barely any idea of what RSS is or how to use an RSS app. It's certainly not dead, but it has stagnated in recent years, while things like the Notifications API get integrated into all major browsers. I've created my own RSS aggregator, and a large percentage of smaller sites have misconfigured or broken RSS feeds. Most site owners don't seem to care much about RSS anymore.
cocktailpeanuts 8y ago
RSS is as alive as www.myspace.com is. Before you point out how RSS powers all kinds of other invisible stuff that most people aren't aware of, that's not what this article is talking about, nor is it what people mean when they say RSS is dead. If you truly believe that RSS has as much influence over consumers in 2018 as a decade or so ago, you probably do live in an alternate reality.
- Spivak 8y ago
  Does it really matter if people actually use RSS when it's available basically everywhere. Your neighbor using Twitter for their news feed doesn't harm you.

jklinger410 8y ago

I think this uptick in RSS articles is just a bunch of journalists trying to inspire developers to do something more interesting with the tech.

dabockster 8y ago
This isn't necessarily a bad thing.

vanderZwan 8y ago

You're mixing up websites who provide RSS with end-users who are supposed to make use of it.

jjrh 8y ago

Main reason I don't exclusively use RSS (like I used to) is tons and tons of websites just provide a couple lines in the RSS feed and not the entire article. Super annoying.

WorldMaker 8y ago
That's always been a complaint about RSS going back to its original age, the balance between short summaries and full articles; ads/pageviews/analytics versus "content is king". Have you tried an RSS Reader with an embedded web view for those types of sites? (I use Newsblur and it has a really neat view where it shows the original blog/page and uses a bit of logic to track your cursor to mark as read articles you read directly on the originating site in a frame inside of Newsblur. It doesn't work for all sites but the ones it does work for can be pretty magic. That said, I'm an old school "river" user and simply have a habit workflow that heavily makes use of keyboard shortcuts to open new tabs and close them quickly.)
k1m 8y ago
I work on a service that tries to generate new full-text feeds from these partial ones. You can try it out at http://fivefilters.org/content-only/ http://fivefilters.org/content-only/
Spivak 8y ago
What's the alternative though? The same will be true on all other aggregators.

frooxie 8y ago

A few years ago, my favorite writers and artists had personal blogs. Today, many of them have moved to Instagram, Twitter and/or Facebook, making them inconvenient or impossible to follow using RSS. Apart from the migration to walled gardens, I also think it's a problem that 99% of web users haven't heard of RSS.

thirdsun 8y ago
I really don't understand those artists and writers you mention. Why on earth would they not use their own platform to present their content? This doesn't remove the ability to promote and share your content elsewhere. Content creators really can have it both ways. Publish on your own site and link to, share or duplicate that content on Facebook, Instagram, Medium, Twitter, RSS, Soundcloud and any other service that may be relevant to your audience.
- dnzm 8y ago
  > I really don't understand those artists and writers you mention. Why on earth would they not use their own platform to present their content? Ease of use. Plenty of folks don't have the skills to set things up and keep them humming along, nor do they have the funds to play someone else to do it for them. So they hand over a bit of control in exchange for a platform that's set up and kept up to date. You may argue that they're giving up too much control, and I'd agree with you, but that's not how most (non-technical) users see things.
- frooxie 8y ago
  > Why on earth would they not use their own platform to present their content? I know one of them personally, and I think in her case, she may have had a few hundred people following her art blog, while on Instagram, she quickly amassed over 100,000 followers, so when she stopped updating the blog, she lost less than 1% of her fans. It comes down to people knowing how to follow Instagram/Facebook accounts, while they haven't even heard of RSS.
  - thirdsun 8y ago

LoSboccacc 8y ago

Ars technica only provides a blurb trough rss and iirc no topic filtered rss, hardly a good or usable solution if one has to get out and find content outside the reader

acdha 8y ago
Subscribers get full text and they offer per-section feeds. Beyond that, a full-featured client can implement either of those features. I use Newsblur.com which allows you to control whether you see the feed's description or the readability-filtered page, and you have a training system to up/down flag authors, tags, and arbitrary text.

padthai 8y ago

Here is the RSS feed of Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/rss https://news.ycombinator.com/rss Edit: Every single of those webpages have an RSS feed. Ars Technica: http://feeds.arstechnica.com/arstechnica/index/ http://feeds.arstechnica.com/arstechnica/index/ The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/rss https://www.theguardian.com/uk/rss LWN: https://lwn.net/headlines/newrss https://lwn.net/headlines/newrss BBC: http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/video_and_audio/news_front_page/rss.xml?edition=uk http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/video_and_audio/news_front_page... Reuters: http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/worldNews http://feeds.reuters.com/Reuters/worldNews

nambit 8y ago
Maybe you misunderstood what he was saying. He was saying every one of those pages already has an RSS feed so there's nothing to "revive"
- padthai 8y ago
  I completely misunderstood what he said. I agree with him, I consume most of my news using RSS and even in pages that do not have RSS (like soundcloud) there is a RSS server somewhere serving the feed.
dynamoa 8y ago
Is it me or is BBC's feed outdated or broken?
- Jaruzel 8y ago
  It's you. The BBC feeds work fine... ... however, they do 'touch' a lot of the articles during the week so the order they appear in the feed keeps changing.

VectorLock 8y ago

Yes, RSS still exists. So does Myspace.

Spivak 8y ago
RSS exists and is ubiquitous on the web outside of a few large players. It doesn't have the consumer mind-share but nothing about that hinders your personal RSS experience.

calibas 8y ago

In my experience, the average internet user has barely any idea of what RSS is or how to use an RSS app. It's certainly not dead, but it has stagnated in recent years, while things like the Notifications API get integrated into all major browsers. I've created my own RSS aggregator, and a large percentage of smaller sites have misconfigured or broken RSS feeds. Most site owners don't seem to care much about RSS anymore.

cocktailpeanuts 8y ago

RSS is as alive as www.myspace.com is. Before you point out how RSS powers all kinds of other invisible stuff that most people aren't aware of, that's not what this article is talking about, nor is it what people mean when they say RSS is dead. If you truly believe that RSS has as much influence over consumers in 2018 as a decade or so ago, you probably do live in an alternate reality.

Spivak 8y ago
Does it really matter if people actually use RSS when it's available basically everywhere. Your neighbor using Twitter for their news feed doesn't harm you.