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Anyone who talks about revival of RSS without talking about how it will be sustainable is just ignorant or naive, because the main reason it became what it beca

Anyone who talks about revival of RSS without talking about how it will be sustainable is just ignorant or naive, because the main reason it became what it became has everything to do with money. Content providers centralized because centralized attention is more valuable than aggregation of decentralized attention in an ad driven economy. Just because you want RSS to make a come back doesn't mean it has any chance of coming back unless it makes sense economically. And I don't see any of that mentioned in this article, nor am I aware of one that's guaranteed to work as good as ad driven model. You might as well say it's a perfect time for the renaissance of steam engines.

hvidgaard 8y ago
Podcasts seems to work fine, which is the exact same concept with sound in place of text.
- cocktailpeanuts 8y ago
  most people use podcasts through an app, not by adding the RSS feed to their RSS reader. When people talk about RSS being dead, they mean the consumer usage, and not about how it powers other things behind the scenes.
  - hvidgaard 8y ago
    When people say "RSS" they really mean articles delivered with RSS. And most people use "RSS" through an app(lication). My point is that the economic model that powers podcasts can power articles through RSS as well.
    - cocktailpeanuts 8y ago
      What is the "economic model" you speak of? It's surely not banner ads, and it's surely not search ads. Also it can't do behavioral targeting. Please educate me
      - hvidgaard 8y ago
        They're "sponsored by", just like some YouTubers do. So if your target audience is significant, you can choose to include something from a sponsor in return for a payment.
        cocktailpeanuts 8y ago
        Do you think that model works for textual content the same way it works for Podcast?
        hvidgaard 8y ago
        If they use ad networks I can block it, but inline and serve from their own servers and I cannot. Maybe it'll work, maybe it will not, but I'm inclined to believe it will to the same extend advertising works in newspapers and magazines.
        cocktailpeanuts 8y ago
        Well, it is a fact that it doesn't work. I'm not making this up. The whole industry knows it doesn't work. This type of advertising has a name of its own: "native advertising". Companies like Buzzfeed, etc. made a lot of money in the beginning by taking advantage of this new format, essentially tricking readers into thinking that these are actual real content. However it doesn't work as well as it used to because people have pretty much figured out what a native ad looks like. However podcasts are single threaded, meaning if you're listening to a podcast and an ad starts playing, you could skip it but most people just keep it on as long as it's not too long. Basically it's a pushed advertising. But this is completely different when it comes to textual content because visual content is easily ignorable AND blockable. Plus, even if you don't block or ignore it, you still only glance at the banner ad, which is completely different from the level of advertising done by podcasters. There are tons more reasons why podcasts and textual media are completely different beasts, but the gist is, content industry is not as simple as it looks. Every ad format has a different value from one another, and also it depends on how focused the audience is, etc.
reitanqild 8y ago
Ars technica provides full rss - to paying readers. The price is reasonable. It's a win-win: they probably earn more on each paying customer than on 10 or 20 adblocking users like us. Paying customers get full uncrippled RSS, no ads and no tracking (I think it's tiered though so you might have to pay slightly more to get all these three).
- cocktailpeanuts 8y ago
  I would say that's not RSS winning, but more like Ars Technica adding many "premium features" as a bundle to justify the subscription fee. It's like NYTimes providing crossword puzzle for free to subscribed users. You wouldn't call that "It's the perfect time for a crossword puzzle renaissance", would you?
  - reitanqild 8y ago
    It's not like RSS is winning yet -or certainly- no. But it shows there might be a sustainable solution that includes uncrippled RSS and no ads or tracking.
  - icc97 8y ago
    > Ars Technica adding many "premium features" as a bundle to justify the subscription fee. Personally I think this is fine. If paying for their content encouages them to maintain a quality RSS feed and not track you that seems like a reasonable exchange.
- icc97 8y ago
  I can imagine a subscription service where you could pay to access a bunch of RSS feeds. The fundamental problem is that people are used to not paying for content. But one of the things that has changed over the twenty years that the article talks about is that people are more willing to pay for things on the internet.
dalbasal 8y ago
Economics certainly was central to the story, past or future, but I wouldn't state it quite so strongly. Hopefully I'm not ignorant or naive. Let's start from examples: youtube, facebook, twitter. The platforms' ad businesses definitely benefited from being centralised and proprietary. But, all three "won" their respective platform wars before those lucrative ad businesses existed. They won because that is where people put their content and where people looked at that content. So, who does this economy work for? It just doesn't apply to regular, "personal" users. They don't get paid for content. The profitability of youtube or FB doesn't impact their decisions to post videos there. These decisions collectively determined FB, twitter or youtube becoming major platforms... people's choosing to post. If these users had chosen different platforms, these would have won regardless of how well these platforms lend to advertising^. Centralizing news on FB (for example) isn't working (money-wise) for most news organisations or other established, professional content producers. Youtube doesn't work well (money-wise) for independent producers. Even if you have enough viewers to make a TV show successful, you probably can't afford 3 full time makers on youtube revenue. So... the economics are very profitable for the platforms, but not anyone else. All the decisions that made these platforms successful are/were not directly related to ad-money. Podcasts are the best example. They were the way to distribute certain content. Users adopted podcasts because the content was there, even though the UX was/is clunky. It happened to be decentralized and rss-based. The fact that podcasts work better economically for content makers than youtube... that was incidental. ^Of course, there are bounds of viability/sutainability. FB is at least an order of magnitude above that boundary. It would be possible to make FB with much less than the $25bn in ad revenue it generates.
- cocktailpeanuts 8y ago
  > Podcasts are the best example. They were the way to distribute certain content. Users adopted podcasts because the content was there, even though the UX was/is clunky. It happened to be decentralized and rss-based. I would argue that podcasts are as decentralized as emails are "decentralized". When was the last time you downloaded a Podcast from a self-hosted server? Most people download podcasts through iTunes, SoundCloud, etc. because...centralizing makes sense economically. In this environment, RSS is virtually meaningless because the whole point of RSS was to have an open standard in a world where everyone ran their own RSS servers. Once it becomes centralized you're better off just distributing content as a centralized feed like Twitter. > The fact that podcasts work better economically for content makers than youtube... that was incidental. Nothing's "incidental". There are always reasons behind everything. Let's dig in further to see what's going on. When was the last time you've sat through a shitty Podcast that's 1 hour long? You probably haven't. Now think of how long most Podcasts are. Yes, they are mostly "long-form" content that are 30 minutes to 1 hour long. Now think about the last YouTube video you watched. How long was it? Probably like 3 minutes to 5, or maybe you watch a conference livestream or tutorial that's 1 hour long, but those are exceptions. Most people go to YouTube to watch bite sized videos. This is why ads don't work as well on Youtube compared to Podcasts. Why would you watch a 30 second ad just to watch a 2 minute video? Naturally, if you have the same content, people will watch the videos WITHOUT ads. And this is where the "race to the bottom" begins. So are Podcasts absolutely superior to videos? No. Podcasts have their own drawbacks. Because Podcasts are long form content, listeners don't want to end up wasting their precious 1 hour. Therefore it's really hard as a podcast publisher to get people to listen to their podcast. Which means initial "acquisition" is much harder for Podcasts compared to YouTube. But once you "acquire" the listeners it's worth it because they have "chosen" to listen to you on an on-going basis. Which is why I asked earlier when was the last time you sat through a shitty podcast. It is much harder to build an audience for a Podcast compared to Youtube, you really need to be able to produce super high quality content. My point is, these different types of medium each have pros and cons. But there are always very good reasons if you look behind the scenes. Nothing is "incidental". And again, this all comes down to money.

hvidgaard 8y ago

Podcasts seems to work fine, which is the exact same concept with sound in place of text.

cocktailpeanuts 8y ago
most people use podcasts through an app, not by adding the RSS feed to their RSS reader. When people talk about RSS being dead, they mean the consumer usage, and not about how it powers other things behind the scenes.
- hvidgaard 8y ago
  When people say "RSS" they really mean articles delivered with RSS. And most people use "RSS" through an app(lication). My point is that the economic model that powers podcasts can power articles through RSS as well.
  - cocktailpeanuts 8y ago
    What is the "economic model" you speak of? It's surely not banner ads, and it's surely not search ads. Also it can't do behavioral targeting. Please educate me
    - hvidgaard 8y ago
      They're "sponsored by", just like some YouTubers do. So if your target audience is significant, you can choose to include something from a sponsor in return for a payment.
      - cocktailpeanuts 8y ago
        Do you think that model works for textual content the same way it works for Podcast?
        hvidgaard 8y ago
        If they use ad networks I can block it, but inline and serve from their own servers and I cannot. Maybe it'll work, maybe it will not, but I'm inclined to believe it will to the same extend advertising works in newspapers and magazines.
        cocktailpeanuts 8y ago
        Well, it is a fact that it doesn't work. I'm not making this up. The whole industry knows it doesn't work. This type of advertising has a name of its own: "native advertising". Companies like Buzzfeed, etc. made a lot of money in the beginning by taking advantage of this new format, essentially tricking readers into thinking that these are actual real content. However it doesn't work as well as it used to because people have pretty much figured out what a native ad looks like. However podcasts are single threaded, meaning if you're listening to a podcast and an ad starts playing, you could skip it but most people just keep it on as long as it's not too long. Basically it's a pushed advertising. But this is completely different when it comes to textual content because visual content is easily ignorable AND blockable. Plus, even if you don't block or ignore it, you still only glance at the banner ad, which is completely different from the level of advertising done by podcasters. There are tons more reasons why podcasts and textual media are completely different beasts, but the gist is, content industry is not as simple as it looks. Every ad format has a different value from one another, and also it depends on how focused the audience is, etc.

reitanqild 8y ago

Ars technica provides full rss - to paying readers. The price is reasonable. It's a win-win: they probably earn more on each paying customer than on 10 or 20 adblocking users like us. Paying customers get full uncrippled RSS, no ads and no tracking (I think it's tiered though so you might have to pay slightly more to get all these three).

cocktailpeanuts 8y ago
I would say that's not RSS winning, but more like Ars Technica adding many "premium features" as a bundle to justify the subscription fee. It's like NYTimes providing crossword puzzle for free to subscribed users. You wouldn't call that "It's the perfect time for a crossword puzzle renaissance", would you?
- reitanqild 8y ago
  It's not like RSS is winning yet -or certainly- no. But it shows there might be a sustainable solution that includes uncrippled RSS and no ads or tracking.
- icc97 8y ago
  > Ars Technica adding many "premium features" as a bundle to justify the subscription fee. Personally I think this is fine. If paying for their content encouages them to maintain a quality RSS feed and not track you that seems like a reasonable exchange.
icc97 8y ago
I can imagine a subscription service where you could pay to access a bunch of RSS feeds. The fundamental problem is that people are used to not paying for content. But one of the things that has changed over the twenty years that the article talks about is that people are more willing to pay for things on the internet.

dalbasal 8y ago

Economics certainly was central to the story, past or future, but I wouldn't state it quite so strongly. Hopefully I'm not ignorant or naive. Let's start from examples: youtube, facebook, twitter. The platforms' ad businesses definitely benefited from being centralised and proprietary. But, all three "won" their respective platform wars before those lucrative ad businesses existed. They won because that is where people put their content and where people looked at that content. So, who does this economy work for? It just doesn't apply to regular, "personal" users. They don't get paid for content. The profitability of youtube or FB doesn't impact their decisions to post videos there. These decisions collectively determined FB, twitter or youtube becoming major platforms... people's choosing to post. If these users had chosen different platforms, these would have won regardless of how well these platforms lend to advertising^. Centralizing news on FB (for example) isn't working (money-wise) for most news organisations or other established, professional content producers. Youtube doesn't work well (money-wise) for independent producers. Even if you have enough viewers to make a TV show successful, you probably can't afford 3 full time makers on youtube revenue. So... the economics are very profitable for the platforms, but not anyone else. All the decisions that made these platforms successful are/were not directly related to ad-money. Podcasts are the best example. They were the way to distribute certain content. Users adopted podcasts because the content was there, even though the UX was/is clunky. It happened to be decentralized and rss-based. The fact that podcasts work better economically for content makers than youtube... that was incidental. ^Of course, there are bounds of viability/sutainability. FB is at least an order of magnitude above that boundary. It would be possible to make FB with much less than the $25bn in ad revenue it generates.

cocktailpeanuts 8y ago
> Podcasts are the best example. They were the way to distribute certain content. Users adopted podcasts because the content was there, even though the UX was/is clunky. It happened to be decentralized and rss-based. I would argue that podcasts are as decentralized as emails are "decentralized". When was the last time you downloaded a Podcast from a self-hosted server? Most people download podcasts through iTunes, SoundCloud, etc. because...centralizing makes sense economically. In this environment, RSS is virtually meaningless because the whole point of RSS was to have an open standard in a world where everyone ran their own RSS servers. Once it becomes centralized you're better off just distributing content as a centralized feed like Twitter. > The fact that podcasts work better economically for content makers than youtube... that was incidental. Nothing's "incidental". There are always reasons behind everything. Let's dig in further to see what's going on. When was the last time you've sat through a shitty Podcast that's 1 hour long? You probably haven't. Now think of how long most Podcasts are. Yes, they are mostly "long-form" content that are 30 minutes to 1 hour long. Now think about the last YouTube video you watched. How long was it? Probably like 3 minutes to 5, or maybe you watch a conference livestream or tutorial that's 1 hour long, but those are exceptions. Most people go to YouTube to watch bite sized videos. This is why ads don't work as well on Youtube compared to Podcasts. Why would you watch a 30 second ad just to watch a 2 minute video? Naturally, if you have the same content, people will watch the videos WITHOUT ads. And this is where the "race to the bottom" begins. So are Podcasts absolutely superior to videos? No. Podcasts have their own drawbacks. Because Podcasts are long form content, listeners don't want to end up wasting their precious 1 hour. Therefore it's really hard as a podcast publisher to get people to listen to their podcast. Which means initial "acquisition" is much harder for Podcasts compared to YouTube. But once you "acquire" the listeners it's worth it because they have "chosen" to listen to you on an on-going basis. Which is why I asked earlier when was the last time you sat through a shitty podcast. It is much harder to build an audience for a Podcast compared to Youtube, you really need to be able to produce super high quality content. My point is, these different types of medium each have pros and cons. But there are always very good reasons if you look behind the scenes. Nothing is "incidental". And again, this all comes down to money.