4 ms·

RSS has no analytics. that's the big weakness. RSS has been stripped of content even in most other blogs, substituting it for links back to the main sites, whic

RSS has no analytics. that's the big weakness. RSS has been stripped of content even in most other blogs, substituting it for links back to the main sites, which is a workable compromise for webmaster but not one that helps readers. yahoo pipes where a stopgap for a while, until yahoo pulled the plug. I think what's needed is an intrusive format that delivers metrics and tracking. sure it'd be another tool for control and manipulation, but we'd at least have back the ability to read our news centralized.

dewiz 9y ago
Readers don’t need/want analytics though, so this is a friction between content accessibility and businesses tracking usage
gerbilly 9y ago
> RSS has no analytics. Great! Another selling point.
- LoSboccacc 9y ago
  I agree, but realistically speaking that is why it’s being fought by content providers whether we the techies like it or not
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - gkya 9y ago
    Let it be fought by them all the time. Useful websites will have an RSS feed. It's a nice filter, IMO.
    - LoSboccacc 9y ago
      that's kind of an ivory tower argument. "let's people don't have nice thing, we know what's best for them." meanwhile, most normal use don't gives a damn if the site track their behavior and post relevant ads, as long as they get quality content and ads aren't abusive they believe it's a fair bargain.
      - acct1771 9y ago
        "ads aren't abusive" "believe"
        zbentley 9y ago
        Believe it or not, some people make high-quality content on the internet with the expectation of compensation. The current state of advertising is ethically and technically questionable in many ways. But the idea of advertising as a revenue model is not.
        Spivak 9y ago
        Ethical advertising is pretty much a unicorn. I don't deny that it's possible but I would struggle to find even a single example of it in the wild.
        gkya 9y ago
        I guess Deck Network was an example of that. Most of the 5-6 ads I intentionally clicked ever was theirs. There were also similar networks like Carbon.
      - gkya 9y ago
        No, more like "instead of trying to tame bad actors making compromises, we refrain from them and tell others to do so too".
firasd 9y ago
Embedded images? I don't think the big weakness is lack of tracking, really, I think the big weakness is consumer adoption. The average person (outside of the journalist/influencer-types that continue to bemoan the loss of Google Reader) doesn't care to use feeds. Podcasts (based on feeds) are still held back by the idea that you have to figure out how to subscribe to a show.
eric_the_read 9y ago
RSS doesn't need analytics. If you want analytics, put them on the links in the feed. If you want to know that people are reading the link at all, either put in an invisible pixel, or just include a paragraph with a [more...] link.
- ge0rg 9y ago
  RSS feeds that provide a paragraph (or less) and a "more..." link make me unsubscribe immediately. I'm most often reading my feeds when offline or on the go, and not having the full article makes it worthless.
Naga 9y ago
As a frequent RSS user, I don't mind when feeds use links back to the main site. I personally use RSS to notify me when a new article is posted.
- jeena 9y ago
  As a frequent RSS user, I want to read the content in my preferred environment with my preferred contrast, colors and font. Many years ago I decided to not follow people who only put a crippeled version of their content into my RSS reader. If they don't want to be read, that's ok, they're pleanty others with better content anyway which I gladly read instead.
  - qume 9y ago
    Any chance you know of a good list of full uncrippled rss feeds?
    - jeena 9y ago
      I'm not quite sure what you mean, aren't list of things to read very personal and dependent on the taste and interests of the person? My website has full feed: https://jeena.net/all.atom https://jeena.net/all.atom and so have blogs like Kottke http://feeds.kottke.org/main http://feeds.kottke.org/main Marco Arment https://marco.org/rss https://marco.org/rss Scott Hanslemann http://feeds.hanselman.com/ScottHanselman http://feeds.hanselman.com/ScottHanselman and most of the personal blogs you can find out there. But as I said, I most probably didn't quite get the question.
      - jeena 9y ago
        But otherwise there are plugins like https://tt-rss.org/oldforum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1539 https://tt-rss.org/oldforum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1539 to replace the short content in a RSS feed with the full content from the Website.
jsjohnst 9y ago
As there were quite a few analytics companies for RSS when it was more popular, your comment couldn’t be further from the truth. The founder of one of the most popular RSS analytics firms (FeedBurner) later went on to be the CEO of twitter in fact.
p2t2p 9y ago
How come it doesn't? I'm a paying subscriber of Ars Technica so I have unique personified URLs to access various of their feeds. You also can include images from the web into the feed and most of the clients will gladly render it. There are myriads of tricks you can use to collect data.
- kabanossen 9y ago
  RSS is a protocol, not a service. Email doesn't have analytics, nor does html or http or any other protocol. Analytics is functionality you connect to services or tools, generating logs of how you use something. It's not on the same level of abstraction as a protocol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS
ino 9y ago
That's what feedburner was for and looking back it's so obvious why google bought them.
kabanossen 9y ago
RSS is a protocol, not a service. Email doesn't have analytics, nor does html or http or any other protocol. Analytics is functionality you connect to services or tools, generating logs of how you use something. It's not on the same level of abstraction as a protocol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS
- LoSboccacc 9y ago
  duh, this is only a technicality, but since you need to be anal about it, I'll have the detail obsessive version so you can follow the discussion too: "RSS doesn't define support active content, which is what's used on other channel to build in depth analytical tool that go beyond page view. without active content, analytic is in control of the reading software, a big step back from other content delivery protocol. even email could be used to track engagement using unique links for each recipient, but most reader software has an incentive to cache reads and not to forward unique links, letting content provider with the only option of syndicating link and summaries, causing a natural bias for clickbaiting titles, because driving user to the producer is the only way to get back analytical data. this has caused a steep decline in the availability of rss content and viability of rss for consumers."

dewiz 9y ago

Readers don’t need/want analytics though, so this is a friction between content accessibility and businesses tracking usage

gerbilly 9y ago

> RSS has no analytics. Great! Another selling point.

LoSboccacc 9y ago
I agree, but realistically speaking that is why it’s being fought by content providers whether we the techies like it or not
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- gkya 9y ago
  Let it be fought by them all the time. Useful websites will have an RSS feed. It's a nice filter, IMO.
  - LoSboccacc 9y ago
    that's kind of an ivory tower argument. "let's people don't have nice thing, we know what's best for them." meanwhile, most normal use don't gives a damn if the site track their behavior and post relevant ads, as long as they get quality content and ads aren't abusive they believe it's a fair bargain.
    - acct1771 9y ago
      "ads aren't abusive" "believe"
      - zbentley 9y ago
        Believe it or not, some people make high-quality content on the internet with the expectation of compensation. The current state of advertising is ethically and technically questionable in many ways. But the idea of advertising as a revenue model is not.
        Spivak 9y ago
        Ethical advertising is pretty much a unicorn. I don't deny that it's possible but I would struggle to find even a single example of it in the wild.
        gkya 9y ago
        I guess Deck Network was an example of that. Most of the 5-6 ads I intentionally clicked ever was theirs. There were also similar networks like Carbon.
    - gkya 9y ago
      No, more like "instead of trying to tame bad actors making compromises, we refrain from them and tell others to do so too".

firasd 9y ago

Embedded images? I don't think the big weakness is lack of tracking, really, I think the big weakness is consumer adoption. The average person (outside of the journalist/influencer-types that continue to bemoan the loss of Google Reader) doesn't care to use feeds. Podcasts (based on feeds) are still held back by the idea that you have to figure out how to subscribe to a show.

eric_the_read 9y ago

RSS doesn't need analytics. If you want analytics, put them on the links in the feed. If you want to know that people are reading the link at all, either put in an invisible pixel, or just include a paragraph with a [more...] link.

ge0rg 9y ago
RSS feeds that provide a paragraph (or less) and a "more..." link make me unsubscribe immediately. I'm most often reading my feeds when offline or on the go, and not having the full article makes it worthless.

Naga 9y ago

As a frequent RSS user, I don't mind when feeds use links back to the main site. I personally use RSS to notify me when a new article is posted.

jeena 9y ago
As a frequent RSS user, I want to read the content in my preferred environment with my preferred contrast, colors and font. Many years ago I decided to not follow people who only put a crippeled version of their content into my RSS reader. If they don't want to be read, that's ok, they're pleanty others with better content anyway which I gladly read instead.
- qume 9y ago
  Any chance you know of a good list of full uncrippled rss feeds?
  - jeena 9y ago
    I'm not quite sure what you mean, aren't list of things to read very personal and dependent on the taste and interests of the person? My website has full feed: https://jeena.net/all.atom https://jeena.net/all.atom and so have blogs like Kottke http://feeds.kottke.org/main http://feeds.kottke.org/main Marco Arment https://marco.org/rss https://marco.org/rss Scott Hanslemann http://feeds.hanselman.com/ScottHanselman http://feeds.hanselman.com/ScottHanselman and most of the personal blogs you can find out there. But as I said, I most probably didn't quite get the question.
    - jeena 9y ago
      But otherwise there are plugins like https://tt-rss.org/oldforum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1539 https://tt-rss.org/oldforum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1539 to replace the short content in a RSS feed with the full content from the Website.

jsjohnst 9y ago

As there were quite a few analytics companies for RSS when it was more popular, your comment couldn’t be further from the truth. The founder of one of the most popular RSS analytics firms (FeedBurner) later went on to be the CEO of twitter in fact.

p2t2p 9y ago

How come it doesn't? I'm a paying subscriber of Ars Technica so I have unique personified URLs to access various of their feeds. You also can include images from the web into the feed and most of the clients will gladly render it. There are myriads of tricks you can use to collect data.

kabanossen 9y ago
RSS is a protocol, not a service. Email doesn't have analytics, nor does html or http or any other protocol. Analytics is functionality you connect to services or tools, generating logs of how you use something. It's not on the same level of abstraction as a protocol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS

ino 9y ago

That's what feedburner was for and looking back it's so obvious why google bought them.

kabanossen 9y ago

RSS is a protocol, not a service. Email doesn't have analytics, nor does html or http or any other protocol. Analytics is functionality you connect to services or tools, generating logs of how you use something. It's not on the same level of abstraction as a protocol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS

LoSboccacc 9y ago
duh, this is only a technicality, but since you need to be anal about it, I'll have the detail obsessive version so you can follow the discussion too: "RSS doesn't define support active content, which is what's used on other channel to build in depth analytical tool that go beyond page view. without active content, analytic is in control of the reading software, a big step back from other content delivery protocol. even email could be used to track engagement using unique links for each recipient, but most reader software has an incentive to cache reads and not to forward unique links, letting content provider with the only option of syndicating link and summaries, causing a natural bias for clickbaiting titles, because driving user to the producer is the only way to get back analytical data. this has caused a steep decline in the availability of rss content and viability of rss for consumers."