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I wonder how many people still use RSS to subscribe to sites, even the HN crowd. Personally I stopped using "traditional" RSS readers years ago, and have stopp

I wonder how many people still use RSS to subscribe to sites, even the HN crowd. Personally I stopped using "traditional" RSS readers years ago, and have stopped using more "modern" RSS readers like Flipboard or Feedly last couple of years, since they're just a subset of what I can find on Twitter. Most people who own a blog have a Twitter and they share all their posts on their feed anyway, so I just follow them on Twitter and use Twitter as "RSS reader". Before you open web standards advocates throw rocks at me, I am not an open standards hater either, I have built a couple of RSS related apps as projects in the past and still believe that's the way to go in the long term, but in 2016 I can't really find a reason to still use a RSS reader. In fact the scenarios like what OP mentioned in the article is exactly why I would rather use Twitter. Why deprive of yourself of an opportunity to read content from someone you like, when you have a totally free option?

pavel_lishin 10y ago
> I just follow them on Twitter and use Twitter as "RSS reader". This quickly breaks down. I subscribe to 1096 sites according to Newsblur. I would 100% miss some content from those sites if I only followed them on twitter. And for some of those sites, that's probably fine; a fair amount are just 'entertainment'. But there are updates I would hate to miss, even if they tweeted links to them at 3am or right before a huge tweet-storm from someone else. That is exactly the problem RSS was designed to solve.
- michilehr 10y ago
  Or when you were on vacation taking a brake from work and so also from the tech stuff. RSS is great for not missing something. All that interest based sorting for social media made RSS much more important for me.
z3t4 10y ago
I use RSS to get ad-free high-quality content that I've opted in to. There will be no hard feelings if I do not "RSS" my friends or colleges. And what I read is not logged in some database.
icebraining 10y ago
they're just a subset of what I can find on Twitter. That's not possible, because you can get your Twitter timeline as an RSS feed.
CharlesW 10y ago
> "… in 2016 I can't really find a reason to still use a RSS reader." Also remember that every podcast app is an RSS reader. This year, 21% US adults ages 12 or older have listened to a podcast in the past month.

pavel_lishin 10y ago

> I just follow them on Twitter and use Twitter as "RSS reader". This quickly breaks down. I subscribe to 1096 sites according to Newsblur. I would 100% miss some content from those sites if I only followed them on twitter. And for some of those sites, that's probably fine; a fair amount are just 'entertainment'. But there are updates I would hate to miss, even if they tweeted links to them at 3am or right before a huge tweet-storm from someone else. That is exactly the problem RSS was designed to solve.

michilehr 10y ago
Or when you were on vacation taking a brake from work and so also from the tech stuff. RSS is great for not missing something. All that interest based sorting for social media made RSS much more important for me.

z3t4 10y ago

I use RSS to get ad-free high-quality content that I've opted in to. There will be no hard feelings if I do not "RSS" my friends or colleges. And what I read is not logged in some database.

icebraining 10y ago

they're just a subset of what I can find on Twitter. That's not possible, because you can get your Twitter timeline as an RSS feed.

CharlesW 10y ago

> "… in 2016 I can't really find a reason to still use a RSS reader." Also remember that every podcast app is an RSS reader. This year, 21% US adults ages 12 or older have listened to a podcast in the past month.