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While going back to RSS sounds like the virtuous move, the reason I believe most people are going back to newsletters is that email is an inbox people have to c

While going back to RSS sounds like the virtuous move, the reason I believe most people are going back to newsletters is that email is an inbox people have to check and the likelihood of them viewing and acting on content that is delivered to their email inbox vs their RSS reader inbox is much higher. With no data to back this up I'd wager conversion rates (read x and click to see y linked within x) are at least double that of RSS. Possibly even much more. I've been an RSS user for years and I use it to subscribe to blogs mostly. Despite this, I would never subscribe to the RSS feeds of some of the most popular email newsletters I know and receive. With Google giving up on the Google Reader years ago, the market for well-designed, easily accessible, and free RSS readers sort of dried up overnight. I use Reeder for macOS, which is a paid (but cheap) app and I know full well this is a power user situation. I would never expect the overwhelming majority of users to get back on the RSS bandwagon unless browsers made it a first-class feature with a noticeable call-to-action on sites with available RSS feeds, an inbox letting me know new content has been published since I last checked, and a clean reading interface that mirrors what Readability, Instapaper, and others used to provide.

dwightgunning 10y ago
Exactly. The marketeers and Growth Hackers won the battle. That discussion around engagement was even had amongst RSS advocates when it came syndicating the full-text vs a summary (really,the lede) of a post/article. Anybody looking to monetise attention should be focussed on email.
jobigoud 10y ago
> an inbox letting me know new content has been published since I last checked I'm super happy with RSS and don't want to clutter my inbox. One difference with e-mail is that sometimes we don't care about some articles, especially on the high volume sites. In an RSS reader it will be bold as unread and this cause anxiety and make it harder to distinguish a newly arrived article vs the most recent unread article. I feel that for RSS we need three levels of flags: new, unread, read. Or "unread, read title, read article". In an e-mail inbox you will make sure everything is in the read status. In an RSS reader that amounts to too many janitor clicks.
wcummings 10y ago
I imagine people would read RSS and email in the same application.
Donzo 10y ago
Many Internet marketers invested a lot of time, energy, and resources into developing followings on Facebook, only to discover one day that their connection to their subscribers would be compromised by Facebook's desire to promote sponsored posts. I believe this encouraged the spread of email lists and a drift away from social networks.
DubiousPusher 10y ago
Yeah, when we were building a notification system for our crash processing tool we ended up creating a really spammy email bot. I hated it and felt really guilty about it but people asked us for it because they wouldn't remember to check a dash board.
flukus 10y ago
> I believe most people are going back to newsletters is that email is an inbox people have to check and the likelihood of them viewing and acting on content that is delivered to their email inbox vs their RSS reader inbox is much higher. I don't see any of that anymore now that gmails filters into social and offer tabs. I don't even see the couple I want to see.

dwightgunning 10y ago

Exactly. The marketeers and Growth Hackers won the battle. That discussion around engagement was even had amongst RSS advocates when it came syndicating the full-text vs a summary (really,the lede) of a post/article. Anybody looking to monetise attention should be focussed on email.

jobigoud 10y ago

> an inbox letting me know new content has been published since I last checked I'm super happy with RSS and don't want to clutter my inbox. One difference with e-mail is that sometimes we don't care about some articles, especially on the high volume sites. In an RSS reader it will be bold as unread and this cause anxiety and make it harder to distinguish a newly arrived article vs the most recent unread article. I feel that for RSS we need three levels of flags: new, unread, read. Or "unread, read title, read article". In an e-mail inbox you will make sure everything is in the read status. In an RSS reader that amounts to too many janitor clicks.

wcummings 10y ago

I imagine people would read RSS and email in the same application.

Donzo 10y ago

Many Internet marketers invested a lot of time, energy, and resources into developing followings on Facebook, only to discover one day that their connection to their subscribers would be compromised by Facebook's desire to promote sponsored posts. I believe this encouraged the spread of email lists and a drift away from social networks.

DubiousPusher 10y ago

Yeah, when we were building a notification system for our crash processing tool we ended up creating a really spammy email bot. I hated it and felt really guilty about it but people asked us for it because they wouldn't remember to check a dash board.

flukus 10y ago

> I believe most people are going back to newsletters is that email is an inbox people have to check and the likelihood of them viewing and acting on content that is delivered to their email inbox vs their RSS reader inbox is much higher. I don't see any of that anymore now that gmails filters into social and offer tabs. I don't even see the couple I want to see.