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I completely understand and respect the author's sentiments. However, it is unfair to compare RSS to Twitter. Twitter is a place where anyone and everyone can e

I completely understand and respect the author's sentiments. However, it is unfair to compare RSS to Twitter. Twitter is a place where anyone and everyone can express their opinions while RSS is a technology and a mechanism to get an updated feed from services and blogs we care about. Most of these blobs and services will be well written or perhaps professionally written articles. These are two very different systems that tap into fundamentally different types of information sources. In short, RSS is a feed of (mostly) professionally written articles while Twitter is full of amateurs expressing half baked thoughts in 140 characters. It is unfair to compare the two.

Glench 8y ago
That feels kind of like a historical circumstance. I could easily imagine something based on RSS where people just express small blurbs like on Twitter. Heck, I've even thought about abandoning Twitter's UIs and creating RSS feeds for all the people I follow. At least then I'd be able to get chronological ordering and read/unread markers on tweets that way
- kazinator 8y ago
  An RSS feed is an XML file that lives under some URL. The RSS reader (or aggregator) polls that URL periodically and picks up new items that have appeared. It's like a web page, itemized into a very regular syntax. If you want to "tweet" using RSS, you need a URL somewhere where you can upload updates to XML content; then give people that URL. Either you have to join some website where content (like blogs) you create are exported as RSS feeds, or else run your own domain.
  - Glench 8y ago
    What part of my comment made it seem like I need to be educated about what RSS is? I think it would have felt nicer for you to inquire rather than just tell me what RSS is. I’m saying that it’s easily possible to imagine a world where the uses of RSS vary from what they’re used for today — different from the parent commentor.
    - kazinator 8y ago
      Your comment didn't educate HN readers sufficiently; I thought it could use a technical backgrounder which could help others imagine the use cases and trade-offs. (I don't understand the Twitter architecture enough to add that for comparison, but perhaps many readers are more familiar with Twitter than RSS due to its popularity.)
      - Glench 8y ago
        Okay, that makes more sense. Maybe if you had included some of that context it would have been helpful in properly interpreting your comment.
- ttepasse 8y ago
  That is by the way not alternative history but where RSS started. Ok, not directly. First it started as a proto semantic web protocol, at Netscape to syndicate links and titles for their portal. Then Dave Winer used RSS to syndicate his weblog, scripting.com and started the marriage of blogs and feeds. But blogs at that time were more small paragraphs, less big articles. And every paragraph was syndicated. That's still visible in archives of long running blogs: • http://scripting.com/2001/09/11.html http://scripting.com/2001/09/11.html • https://kottke.org/98/12/ https://kottke.org/98/12/ … which seems a lot twitter like. The focus on longer articles in blogging is something which started later, in 2001 or so, in my recollection. Btw: Following those blurb-like RSS feeds in a traditional RSS reader with read markers is overwhelming, in my experience. I banned all those feeds into a "High Volume" folder where I more often than not mark all as read just to get ahead.
Swizec 8y ago
I always considered twitter to be a modern global IRC, freenode if you will. At that it is amazing. Complete with all the problems of spam, overwhelm, etc. You gotta find your people, foster a community, and stay there. I owe a lot of my career to twitter I’d say. It’s an amazing place.
skybrian 8y ago
280 characters now, though still too short. There are plenty of professional writers on Twitter. One problem is that there is too much emphasis on short, witty quips in widely shared tweets. It has everyone going for the witty zinger and that makes conversation shallow and obnoxious. Occasionally there are decent tweetstorms, though.
criddell 8y ago
I bet just about every article that shows up in your RSS reader was also linked to from Twitter. It's very easy to use Twitter for RSS.
TheTruth1234 8y ago
>>> In short, RSS is a feed of (mostly) professionally written articles while Twitter is full of amateurs expressing half baked thoughts in 140 characters. It is unfair to compare the two. Given that is true, isn't it "funny" that RSS is now non-existent compared to Twitter? ... I despair at the direction of the web.
- CharlesW 8y ago
  > Given that is true, isn't it "funny" that RSS is now non-existent compared to Twitter? By what measure? More people listen to podcasts (powered by RSS) every month than use Twitter.

Glench 8y ago

That feels kind of like a historical circumstance. I could easily imagine something based on RSS where people just express small blurbs like on Twitter. Heck, I've even thought about abandoning Twitter's UIs and creating RSS feeds for all the people I follow. At least then I'd be able to get chronological ordering and read/unread markers on tweets that way

kazinator 8y ago
An RSS feed is an XML file that lives under some URL. The RSS reader (or aggregator) polls that URL periodically and picks up new items that have appeared. It's like a web page, itemized into a very regular syntax. If you want to "tweet" using RSS, you need a URL somewhere where you can upload updates to XML content; then give people that URL. Either you have to join some website where content (like blogs) you create are exported as RSS feeds, or else run your own domain.
- Glench 8y ago
  What part of my comment made it seem like I need to be educated about what RSS is? I think it would have felt nicer for you to inquire rather than just tell me what RSS is. I’m saying that it’s easily possible to imagine a world where the uses of RSS vary from what they’re used for today — different from the parent commentor.
  - kazinator 8y ago
    Your comment didn't educate HN readers sufficiently; I thought it could use a technical backgrounder which could help others imagine the use cases and trade-offs. (I don't understand the Twitter architecture enough to add that for comparison, but perhaps many readers are more familiar with Twitter than RSS due to its popularity.)
    - Glench 8y ago
      Okay, that makes more sense. Maybe if you had included some of that context it would have been helpful in properly interpreting your comment.
ttepasse 8y ago
That is by the way not alternative history but where RSS started. Ok, not directly. First it started as a proto semantic web protocol, at Netscape to syndicate links and titles for their portal. Then Dave Winer used RSS to syndicate his weblog, scripting.com and started the marriage of blogs and feeds. But blogs at that time were more small paragraphs, less big articles. And every paragraph was syndicated. That's still visible in archives of long running blogs: • http://scripting.com/2001/09/11.html http://scripting.com/2001/09/11.html • https://kottke.org/98/12/ https://kottke.org/98/12/ … which seems a lot twitter like. The focus on longer articles in blogging is something which started later, in 2001 or so, in my recollection. Btw: Following those blurb-like RSS feeds in a traditional RSS reader with read markers is overwhelming, in my experience. I banned all those feeds into a "High Volume" folder where I more often than not mark all as read just to get ahead.

Swizec 8y ago

I always considered twitter to be a modern global IRC, freenode if you will. At that it is amazing. Complete with all the problems of spam, overwhelm, etc. You gotta find your people, foster a community, and stay there. I owe a lot of my career to twitter I’d say. It’s an amazing place.

skybrian 8y ago

280 characters now, though still too short. There are plenty of professional writers on Twitter. One problem is that there is too much emphasis on short, witty quips in widely shared tweets. It has everyone going for the witty zinger and that makes conversation shallow and obnoxious. Occasionally there are decent tweetstorms, though.

criddell 8y ago

I bet just about every article that shows up in your RSS reader was also linked to from Twitter. It's very easy to use Twitter for RSS.

TheTruth1234 8y ago

>>> In short, RSS is a feed of (mostly) professionally written articles while Twitter is full of amateurs expressing half baked thoughts in 140 characters. It is unfair to compare the two. Given that is true, isn't it "funny" that RSS is now non-existent compared to Twitter? ... I despair at the direction of the web.

CharlesW 8y ago
> Given that is true, isn't it "funny" that RSS is now non-existent compared to Twitter? By what measure? More people listen to podcasts (powered by RSS) every month than use Twitter.