4 ms·

I might be biased here as i've built a news aggregator/RSS reader (https://aktu.io https://aktu.io) but imho RSS was and still is the best way to get news from

I might be biased here as i've built a news aggregator/RSS reader (https://aktu.io https://aktu.io) but imho RSS was and still is the best way to get news from sources you like. This is so obvious when you compare RSS to social platforms... I mean Facebook was great to share stuff with your friends and get updates but now it's become a huge mess where you get a little bit of everything, you're not even sure you'll ever see all the publications from sources you like/follow thanks to obscure algorithms, and to make things worse, priority is given to images and videos...

jrochkind1 8y ago
As long as those sources have an RSS feed (that is usable, looking at you Medium), sure. But, most sources that _most_ people (not geeks) like... don't. The comment above where someone said "RSS isn't dead, I have a business scraping pages to make RSS feeds when they didn't have one already"... yeah, exactly.
- themodelplumber 8y ago
  I recently built a new OPML set of feeds from scratch, in different areas like Linux, ham radio, science, general news, and shopping/deals. Easily 95% of these sites offered RSS or Atom feeds. The main offenders were national news sites, for which there were plenty of alternatives. Only a couple are available yet annoying, like the forum at eham.net, which offers a feed that essentially gets you unsorted forum replies mixed in with new topics. So every day's updates are full of "Re:" entries. Anyway that's been the only speed bump so far. I was surprised. Also, since I monitor niche subreddits on Reddit, their generalized feed availability means I can automatically get amazingly wide access to a variety of niche topics (e.g. shorthand writing). Part of my experiment was aimed at figuring out whether RSS is useful to me. It really is, though careful culling of unwanted or unneeded feeds is important. It's kind of like maintaining a plain-HTML links page. Still valuable in its simplicity, but also requiring ongoing refinements to continue to be useful.
- guybedo 8y ago
  yep RSS sure isn't the most user friendly solution, and i guess it's always been the problem #1 with RSS. But it's getting better, or at least not worse?, there's now many good web-based RSS readers that do a great job at helping people find and subscribe to sources but it's still not facebook-easy.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
guybedo 8y ago
by the way, i'm trying with Aktu to improve the RSS experience, well at least mine :-) I've always missed a few things that i tried to add to the platform. I mostly wanted to reduce the noise in my feeds and i also wanted to have a way to be exposed to news outside my feeds. So i built Aktu in a way that same-story articles are automatically grouped together, which helps reduce the noise: instead of having 10 articles about Apple's new hardware event showing up in my feeds, i now have just one big story with references to all the articles... So at the same time, if i want, i can now easily check tens of arictles about that story, articles from my own feeds but also from sources i don't follow. There's a lot of features that i plan on adding but i'm open to suggestions and would love to hear from longtime RSS users what cool features would be great to add!
- e15ctr0n 8y ago
  Hey, just looked at Aktu and I was very impressed with the great job you've done! How long have you been working on it? What's the tech stack you're using? Would love to hear the details.
com2kid 8y ago
And yet here we are on Hacker News, a social platform for news stories. I honestly have never used a feed aggregator, I used Slashdot, then Reddit, and now a mix of Reddit and HN. Having a filter of some sort is really useful.
- guybedo 8y ago
  Not sure HN qualifies as a social platform, and i got there through RSS anyway :-) Used to love Slashdot, now spending more time on HN too i guess and following some reddits through RSS. I even follow some Facebook pages through RSS so i minimize the time and energy spent on FB.
- daveFNbuck 8y ago
  These both serve different purposes. RSS is for sources you like and want to see everything from. Social aggregators are for getting exposed to things from sites you're not already aware of or aren't usually interested in. I want to read every XKCD comic, so I subscribe to its RSS feed. I like to read a little tech news when I'm bored, so I go to Hacker News.
- shakna 8y ago
  And I'm here because this story appeared in my RSS feed. I 'consume' other people's thoughts and opinions via HN, after 'consuming' the story via my feed. Different purposes.
- zaarn 8y ago
  Almost all stories I comment on have at some point appeared in the HN RSS Feed, which contains basically stories that appear on the frontpage. Since I poll every 5 minute I also catch a lot of stories that only briefly are frontpage.
bitcuration 8y ago
RSS reader is used mostly as a updater of the source/site who I care about. When I read, I most of time would still go to the site but RSS allows me to quickly get a summary if I'm interested to go to the page. This is to me the best use of RSS reader, is to keep in touch with the sources. Not much a reader per se.

jrochkind1 8y ago

As long as those sources have an RSS feed (that is usable, looking at you Medium), sure. But, most sources that _most_ people (not geeks) like... don't. The comment above where someone said "RSS isn't dead, I have a business scraping pages to make RSS feeds when they didn't have one already"... yeah, exactly.

themodelplumber 8y ago
I recently built a new OPML set of feeds from scratch, in different areas like Linux, ham radio, science, general news, and shopping/deals. Easily 95% of these sites offered RSS or Atom feeds. The main offenders were national news sites, for which there were plenty of alternatives. Only a couple are available yet annoying, like the forum at eham.net, which offers a feed that essentially gets you unsorted forum replies mixed in with new topics. So every day's updates are full of "Re:" entries. Anyway that's been the only speed bump so far. I was surprised. Also, since I monitor niche subreddits on Reddit, their generalized feed availability means I can automatically get amazingly wide access to a variety of niche topics (e.g. shorthand writing). Part of my experiment was aimed at figuring out whether RSS is useful to me. It really is, though careful culling of unwanted or unneeded feeds is important. It's kind of like maintaining a plain-HTML links page. Still valuable in its simplicity, but also requiring ongoing refinements to continue to be useful.
guybedo 8y ago
yep RSS sure isn't the most user friendly solution, and i guess it's always been the problem #1 with RSS. But it's getting better, or at least not worse?, there's now many good web-based RSS readers that do a great job at helping people find and subscribe to sources but it's still not facebook-easy.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

guybedo 8y ago

by the way, i'm trying with Aktu to improve the RSS experience, well at least mine :-) I've always missed a few things that i tried to add to the platform. I mostly wanted to reduce the noise in my feeds and i also wanted to have a way to be exposed to news outside my feeds. So i built Aktu in a way that same-story articles are automatically grouped together, which helps reduce the noise: instead of having 10 articles about Apple's new hardware event showing up in my feeds, i now have just one big story with references to all the articles... So at the same time, if i want, i can now easily check tens of arictles about that story, articles from my own feeds but also from sources i don't follow. There's a lot of features that i plan on adding but i'm open to suggestions and would love to hear from longtime RSS users what cool features would be great to add!

e15ctr0n 8y ago
Hey, just looked at Aktu and I was very impressed with the great job you've done! How long have you been working on it? What's the tech stack you're using? Would love to hear the details.

com2kid 8y ago

And yet here we are on Hacker News, a social platform for news stories. I honestly have never used a feed aggregator, I used Slashdot, then Reddit, and now a mix of Reddit and HN. Having a filter of some sort is really useful.

guybedo 8y ago
Not sure HN qualifies as a social platform, and i got there through RSS anyway :-) Used to love Slashdot, now spending more time on HN too i guess and following some reddits through RSS. I even follow some Facebook pages through RSS so i minimize the time and energy spent on FB.
daveFNbuck 8y ago
These both serve different purposes. RSS is for sources you like and want to see everything from. Social aggregators are for getting exposed to things from sites you're not already aware of or aren't usually interested in. I want to read every XKCD comic, so I subscribe to its RSS feed. I like to read a little tech news when I'm bored, so I go to Hacker News.
shakna 8y ago
And I'm here because this story appeared in my RSS feed. I 'consume' other people's thoughts and opinions via HN, after 'consuming' the story via my feed. Different purposes.
zaarn 8y ago
Almost all stories I comment on have at some point appeared in the HN RSS Feed, which contains basically stories that appear on the frontpage. Since I poll every 5 minute I also catch a lot of stories that only briefly are frontpage.

bitcuration 8y ago

RSS reader is used mostly as a updater of the source/site who I care about. When I read, I most of time would still go to the site but RSS allows me to quickly get a summary if I'm interested to go to the page. This is to me the best use of RSS reader, is to keep in touch with the sources. Not much a reader per se.