5 ms·

Twitter and Facebook Both Quietly Kill RSS

142 points by ssclafani 15y ago

smogzer 15y ago
speaking of rss feeds, does anybody have a list of "social" or "information" (weather like) sites with support for rss feeds ?
ankrgyl 15y ago
This is super interesting. RSS has gotten really slow and bad, and a few years ago FriendFeed started to push for improvements with the Simple Update Protocol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Update_Protocol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Update_Protocol). The world should move to a standardized JSON-based, OAuth compliant API, but unfortunately having two big, competing players like FB and Twitter means that things will probably partition into camps. It'll be interesting to see what happens when new websites start publishing content: will they define their own new standard or clone FB/Twitter?
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
bradleyland 15y ago
The title is a bit of a double entendre. At first reading, I thought the claim was that (once again), Organization X had killed RSS (figuratively). As it turns out, Facebook and Twitter have, quite literally, killed RSS within the scope of their own systems by removing it from key locations. In my view, RSS was never the right tool for this application anyway. Social networks are naturally conversational in nature, but you're only a part of the conversation while you're there. In the economy of my attention, both Facebook and Twitter occupy a different position than the RSS feeds I follow. Facebook and Twitter are there for when I want them, but my RSS feed is the kind of thing where I try to at least review every headline. I don't want to miss anything in my RSS reader, but I'm perfectly content to miss out on large portions of what occurs on Facebook and Twitter. Twitter is probably closer in function to RSS -- for me, anyway -- than Facebook, in that I rely on it for "pushed" information that I rarely respond to (think service outages and status updates). This could, theoretically, have been fulfilled by RSS, but for some reason, I never made use of RSS that way. I think one of the reasons for this (Twitter as a popular info-push medium) is that you can respond easily through Twitter, even if I only do it on rare occasions. Status blogs provided an avenue for response, but you often had to have an account on every blog... Ugh. Twitter is also great because you don't have to dig through the service website; you simply search Twitter for their company name and follow. Facebook, on the other hand, is purely entertainment for me. I use it to keep up with friends and converse in a time-shifted manner. I cannot imagine collecting RSS feeds from Facebook streams. Based my usage patterns, I don't see this as "killing" RSS for me in a general sense. Maybe I'm a dying breed though.
- nhangen 15y ago
  This is true. The feeds still work, they just hid them from plain sight.
- ankrgyl 15y ago
  A common "general" application of RSS is news, but this will hopefully be slowly phased out as well. The New York Times offers an awesome API (http://developer.nytimes.com/ http://developer.nytimes.com/) which gives you a much better view of their data than their RSS feeds (which they still provide).
  - turbodog 15y ago
    So I'm supposed to use the NYT's custom API to get articles when RSS has, for years, provided a "general" method for me to do the same thing for not only the NYT but millions of other sources?
    - Luyt 15y ago
      Yes, and they want you to install a special 'NYT app' for that, which will be future: every company and news outlet will have its own app.
      - ChrisArchitect 15y ago
        haha, and they'll all be based on frontend UI accessing RSS.
        Luyt 15y ago
        I was thinking more along the lines of 'accessing their own specific API (maybe even a private, undisclosed API)'.
    - ankrgyl 15y ago
      No, and that's why they still provide the RSS feed. My point is that in the immediate future, companies like FB, Twitter, and NY Times will experiment with APIs that provide richer functionality than RSS. Hopefully within a relatively short time frame, the APIs will start converging into a standardized, widely adopted replacement for RSS that builds on these ideas.
petervandijck 15y ago
And thus become even more walled gardens (a proprietary API doesn't count as "open"). The pendulum is still swinging towards "closed", but I sense it's about to swing back.
- follower 15y ago
  > but I sense it's about to swing back. I'm curious what you're seeing that gives you this sense? From where I'm sitting I see things swinging even further toward closed which is rather disheartening but I'd be happy to be shown otherwise.
  - petervandijck 15y ago
    Just the fact that we're so extremely closed now. It just has to swing back at some point.
pstack 15y ago
I have no interest in ever directly using Twitter and there's not enough content on there for me to bother with any workarounds. I currently use RSS for the one Twitter feed I bother to follow and if they ever really do get rid of RSS for their site, I'll just stop using even that. Not that much of a loss. My habits are such that if you don't offer RSS feeds of information I want, I probably won't ever get your information or go to your site. You're not going to sucker me into "visiting regularly", just because you don't offer an RSS feed. I'll just move on and get what I want somewhere else.
- ankrgyl 15y ago
  I don't think getting you to visit their site is the point of the switch. Twitter and FB are in a position where they have enough addicted users that they can get away with messing with standards. RSS is outdated and slow, and FB and Twitter want people to use their data in a more sensible way, via their flexible APIs. It's trivial to build an APP that generates an RSS stream for an arbitrary twitter account with their API, and I'm sure someone will soon. But the point is that they are setting a new standard for what can be done streams of structured data, and hopefully more sites will move away from RSS into cool APIs. Of course, for now at least, there's no standard to this kind of API, but I think that people will eventually figure out what works and converge to it (as is the case with OAuth).
  - pstack 15y ago
    I hear people talk about how "RSS is so slow" all the time, but I still don't understand it. I see no failings or complaints about RSS. I get a headline and then I get an article. Are we talking speed between when content was generated and when it appears in an RSS feed? Honestly, I couldn't care less about that. I'll live if it takes fifteen minutes for an update to reach me. It's not like I'm getting a patient's live EKG readings via RSS. As for yet another standardized API to replace it. As long as it provides the same functionality to all current services/devices that use RSS, that's fine with me. I would really prefer that it not be driven by Facebook and Twitter, however any more than I want Microsoft Office development teams driving the standardization of ODF.
eli 15y ago
UPDATE: Dave Stevens shared a hack around this in the comments that you can use with the Twitter API. Using a well-documented feature of the API? That is not a hack.
- nikcub 15y ago
  You must have missed the memo where now almost anything you do on a computer is hacking. Got a form to submit in Django? I'm hacking. Got nodejs to run a sample app? I'm hacking. Integrate a shitty jQuery plugin? I'm hacking. RTFM - nope, hacking.
  - leon_ 15y ago
    just abuse the word. I hate that everything is "hacking" now - so I started overusing the word. whenever I'm doing something I am hacking. (Sometimes it's not limited to computer activities.) I hope other people will will catch on and overuse the word to the point where it's not cool anymore and everything gets back to normal. (and hackernews can be renamed back to webmasternews)
  - thaumaturgy 15y ago
    Ironically, you seem to have forgotten that "hack" is also a synonym for "kludge" -- long before programmers started referring to themselves as hackers as a term of pride and endearment, many writers were referred to as "hacks". I don't see any problem with referring to using a documented workaround as a "hack" in that context.
    - eli 15y ago
      But that's my point -- it's not a hack OR a kludge OR a workaround. It is the straightforward and recommended way of doing something. Twitter didn't kill RSS, they just stopped advertising it to end users.
kevinchen 15y ago
99.99% of users will not notice or care. I can see a use case where devs who don’t feel like building for Twitter’s API will want to use RSS to quickly get a user’s recent tweets. But I don’t think this will significantly impact anybody’s anything, and it feels like the author is exaggerating the consequences.
- chc 15y ago
  Most users of anything don't care about RSS. Most users also don't explicitly care about the API, either — those are both at a lower level than what users notice. That doesn't mean they're worthless.
dfhjytkyu 15y ago
^__^: hello, Welcome to the online store ^__^hello:________( http://bloq.in/577 http://bloq.in/577 )________ Christan Audigier bikini $23 Ed Hardy Bikini $23 Smful short_t-shirt_woman $15 ed hardy short_tank_woman $16 Sandal $32 christian louboutin $80 Sunglass $15 COACH_Necklace $27 handbag $33 AF tank woman $17 puma slipper woman $30 ^__^hello:________( http://bloq.in/577 http://bloq.in/577 )________ ~ ¤ ╭⌒╮ ╭⌒╮ ╭⌒╭⌒╮╭⌒╮～╭⌒╮ ,））））,''）~~ ,''~） ╱◥█◣ ╱◥█◣ ｜田｜田｜｜田｜田｜ ╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬
pavel_lishin 15y ago
> Unfortunately, it seems #2 was not accidental, as it was never fixed. That does not necessarily follow.
voidfiles 15y ago
RSS is awesome, and standards help ease integration, but we need to stop freaking out about RSS. What we need to focus on is making sure companies endorse open data. Allowing users to get data in, and out in a reasonable format.
hammock 15y ago
Does anyone have an example of RSS being used/picked up by the mainstream user?
- idle_processor 15y ago
  Google Reader didn't die like Wave; that implies some level of success.
- eli 15y ago
  Does anyone actually use Outlook's RSS features? I don't, but it seemed like that at least had potential to break into the mainstream.
dholowiski 15y ago
Rss was just a transitional technology. Twitter and Facebook have made it far easier for normal people to get news updates, and for developers there are API's. RSS will live on for podcast delivery (at least until apple dropsre-invents" podcasting) but other than that, let's just let RSS rest in peace.
- leon_ 15y ago
  news in 140 chars ... reminds me of that movie where they water their plants with soda.
  - eagleal 15y ago
    It's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy
  - chopsueyar 15y ago
    It was an energy drink, "Brawndo", not soda.
- brazzy 15y ago
  Couldn't disagree more. Neither Twitter nor Facebook, and least of all every dinky little site offering a homebrewed API are an even remotely adequate replacement for RSS. Twitter and Facebook have NOT made anything easier for normal people, they just managed to get the mindshare to force people to deal with their inadequacies, whereas a million different sites offering RSS feeds somehow never turned into something everyone and their dog "had to" use to be cool. I use RSS daily as my main news source, check Facebook maybe every other day and never could figure out the point of Twitter.
hollerith 15y ago
I notice that Google Reader still lets a person subscribe to someone's Twitter.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
riams 15y ago
I've fully abandoned Google Reader for Twitter.
chopsueyar 15y ago
"Embrace and extend." Way to support open source, guys!
randomgeek 15y ago
140 char posts are not what one should should subscribe to via. a RSS reader. Though I stand for open standards I don't really think that it is crucial that Twitter and Facebook supports RSS. Especially not Facebook - Twitter because it is more like the medias that I subscribe to; blogs, newssources and so on...
elgenie 15y ago
At least from the FB standpoint, "kill RSS" is quite an exaggeration. The code correcting the oversight that removed the links for RSS feeds in latest redesign of Page profiles should be going out tomorrow (5/10/11). Note that the feeds themselves (e.g. https://www.facebook.com/feeds/page.php?id=9445547199&format=rss20 https://www.facebook.com/feeds/page.php?id=9445547199&fo...) were unaffected. /me added back the Page RSS feeds during a hackathon last year
imwilsonxu 15y ago
For me, reading rss is like reading newspapers or books: Better contents polished for readers, but less interactions(with authors or others readers). On the other hand, reading facebook status or tweets is like listening or chatting with friends. Contents are impromptu and often out of context. However, it's much easier to interact.
bugmenot 15y ago
If you load someones twitter page without javascript the link to the rss feed is still presented in the usual way. ie, loading up this page: http://twitter.com/BBC http://twitter.com/BBC with javascript turned off makes an rss icon appear in the address bar (in opera). And in the source we see: * <link rel="alternate" href="http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/19701628.rss http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/19701628.rss title="BBC's Tweets" type="application/rss+xml" /> * <link rel="alternate" href="http://twitter.com/favorites/19701628.rss http://twitter.com/favorites/19701628.rss title="BBC's Favorites" type="application/rss+xml" />

142 points by ssclafani 15y ago

speaking of rss feeds, does anybody have a list of "social" or "information" (weather like) sites with support for rss feeds ?

ankrgyl 15y ago

This is super interesting. RSS has gotten really slow and bad, and a few years ago FriendFeed started to push for improvements with the Simple Update Protocol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Update_Protocol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Update_Protocol). The world should move to a standardized JSON-based, OAuth compliant API, but unfortunately having two big, competing players like FB and Twitter means that things will probably partition into camps. It'll be interesting to see what happens when new websites start publishing content: will they define their own new standard or clone FB/Twitter?

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

bradleyland 15y ago

The title is a bit of a double entendre. At first reading, I thought the claim was that (once again), Organization X had killed RSS (figuratively). As it turns out, Facebook and Twitter have, quite literally, killed RSS within the scope of their own systems by removing it from key locations. In my view, RSS was never the right tool for this application anyway. Social networks are naturally conversational in nature, but you're only a part of the conversation while you're there. In the economy of my attention, both Facebook and Twitter occupy a different position than the RSS feeds I follow. Facebook and Twitter are there for when I want them, but my RSS feed is the kind of thing where I try to at least review every headline. I don't want to miss anything in my RSS reader, but I'm perfectly content to miss out on large portions of what occurs on Facebook and Twitter. Twitter is probably closer in function to RSS -- for me, anyway -- than Facebook, in that I rely on it for "pushed" information that I rarely respond to (think service outages and status updates). This could, theoretically, have been fulfilled by RSS, but for some reason, I never made use of RSS that way. I think one of the reasons for this (Twitter as a popular info-push medium) is that you can respond easily through Twitter, even if I only do it on rare occasions. Status blogs provided an avenue for response, but you often had to have an account on every blog... Ugh. Twitter is also great because you don't have to dig through the service website; you simply search Twitter for their company name and follow. Facebook, on the other hand, is purely entertainment for me. I use it to keep up with friends and converse in a time-shifted manner. I cannot imagine collecting RSS feeds from Facebook streams. Based my usage patterns, I don't see this as "killing" RSS for me in a general sense. Maybe I'm a dying breed though.

nhangen 15y ago
This is true. The feeds still work, they just hid them from plain sight.
ankrgyl 15y ago
A common "general" application of RSS is news, but this will hopefully be slowly phased out as well. The New York Times offers an awesome API (http://developer.nytimes.com/ http://developer.nytimes.com/) which gives you a much better view of their data than their RSS feeds (which they still provide).
- turbodog 15y ago
  So I'm supposed to use the NYT's custom API to get articles when RSS has, for years, provided a "general" method for me to do the same thing for not only the NYT but millions of other sources?
  - Luyt 15y ago
    Yes, and they want you to install a special 'NYT app' for that, which will be future: every company and news outlet will have its own app.
    - ChrisArchitect 15y ago
      haha, and they'll all be based on frontend UI accessing RSS.
      - Luyt 15y ago
        I was thinking more along the lines of 'accessing their own specific API (maybe even a private, undisclosed API)'.
  - ankrgyl 15y ago
    No, and that's why they still provide the RSS feed. My point is that in the immediate future, companies like FB, Twitter, and NY Times will experiment with APIs that provide richer functionality than RSS. Hopefully within a relatively short time frame, the APIs will start converging into a standardized, widely adopted replacement for RSS that builds on these ideas.

petervandijck 15y ago

And thus become even more walled gardens (a proprietary API doesn't count as "open"). The pendulum is still swinging towards "closed", but I sense it's about to swing back.

follower 15y ago
> but I sense it's about to swing back. I'm curious what you're seeing that gives you this sense? From where I'm sitting I see things swinging even further toward closed which is rather disheartening but I'd be happy to be shown otherwise.
- petervandijck 15y ago
  Just the fact that we're so extremely closed now. It just has to swing back at some point.

pstack 15y ago

I have no interest in ever directly using Twitter and there's not enough content on there for me to bother with any workarounds. I currently use RSS for the one Twitter feed I bother to follow and if they ever really do get rid of RSS for their site, I'll just stop using even that. Not that much of a loss. My habits are such that if you don't offer RSS feeds of information I want, I probably won't ever get your information or go to your site. You're not going to sucker me into "visiting regularly", just because you don't offer an RSS feed. I'll just move on and get what I want somewhere else.

ankrgyl 15y ago
I don't think getting you to visit their site is the point of the switch. Twitter and FB are in a position where they have enough addicted users that they can get away with messing with standards. RSS is outdated and slow, and FB and Twitter want people to use their data in a more sensible way, via their flexible APIs. It's trivial to build an APP that generates an RSS stream for an arbitrary twitter account with their API, and I'm sure someone will soon. But the point is that they are setting a new standard for what can be done streams of structured data, and hopefully more sites will move away from RSS into cool APIs. Of course, for now at least, there's no standard to this kind of API, but I think that people will eventually figure out what works and converge to it (as is the case with OAuth).
- pstack 15y ago
  I hear people talk about how "RSS is so slow" all the time, but I still don't understand it. I see no failings or complaints about RSS. I get a headline and then I get an article. Are we talking speed between when content was generated and when it appears in an RSS feed? Honestly, I couldn't care less about that. I'll live if it takes fifteen minutes for an update to reach me. It's not like I'm getting a patient's live EKG readings via RSS. As for yet another standardized API to replace it. As long as it provides the same functionality to all current services/devices that use RSS, that's fine with me. I would really prefer that it not be driven by Facebook and Twitter, however any more than I want Microsoft Office development teams driving the standardization of ODF.

eli 15y ago

UPDATE: Dave Stevens shared a hack around this in the comments that you can use with the Twitter API. Using a well-documented feature of the API? That is not a hack.

nikcub 15y ago
You must have missed the memo where now almost anything you do on a computer is hacking. Got a form to submit in Django? I'm hacking. Got nodejs to run a sample app? I'm hacking. Integrate a shitty jQuery plugin? I'm hacking. RTFM - nope, hacking.
- leon_ 15y ago
  just abuse the word. I hate that everything is "hacking" now - so I started overusing the word. whenever I'm doing something I am hacking. (Sometimes it's not limited to computer activities.) I hope other people will will catch on and overuse the word to the point where it's not cool anymore and everything gets back to normal. (and hackernews can be renamed back to webmasternews)
- thaumaturgy 15y ago
  Ironically, you seem to have forgotten that "hack" is also a synonym for "kludge" -- long before programmers started referring to themselves as hackers as a term of pride and endearment, many writers were referred to as "hacks". I don't see any problem with referring to using a documented workaround as a "hack" in that context.
  - eli 15y ago
    But that's my point -- it's not a hack OR a kludge OR a workaround. It is the straightforward and recommended way of doing something. Twitter didn't kill RSS, they just stopped advertising it to end users.

kevinchen 15y ago

99.99% of users will not notice or care. I can see a use case where devs who don’t feel like building for Twitter’s API will want to use RSS to quickly get a user’s recent tweets. But I don’t think this will significantly impact anybody’s anything, and it feels like the author is exaggerating the consequences.

chc 15y ago
Most users of anything don't care about RSS. Most users also don't explicitly care about the API, either — those are both at a lower level than what users notice. That doesn't mean they're worthless.

dfhjytkyu 15y ago

^__^: hello, Welcome to the online store ^__^hello:________( http://bloq.in/577 http://bloq.in/577 )________ Christan Audigier bikini $23 Ed Hardy Bikini $23 Smful short_t-shirt_woman $15 ed hardy short_tank_woman $16 Sandal $32 christian louboutin $80 Sunglass $15 COACH_Necklace $27 handbag $33 AF tank woman $17 puma slipper woman $30 ^__^hello:________( http://bloq.in/577 http://bloq.in/577 )________ ~ ¤ ╭⌒╮ ╭⌒╮ ╭⌒╭⌒╮╭⌒╮～╭⌒╮ ,））））,''）~~ ,''~） ╱◥█◣ ╱◥█◣ ｜田｜田｜｜田｜田｜ ╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬

pavel_lishin 15y ago

> Unfortunately, it seems #2 was not accidental, as it was never fixed. That does not necessarily follow.

voidfiles 15y ago

RSS is awesome, and standards help ease integration, but we need to stop freaking out about RSS. What we need to focus on is making sure companies endorse open data. Allowing users to get data in, and out in a reasonable format.

hammock 15y ago

Does anyone have an example of RSS being used/picked up by the mainstream user?

idle_processor 15y ago
Google Reader didn't die like Wave; that implies some level of success.
eli 15y ago
Does anyone actually use Outlook's RSS features? I don't, but it seemed like that at least had potential to break into the mainstream.

dholowiski 15y ago

Rss was just a transitional technology. Twitter and Facebook have made it far easier for normal people to get news updates, and for developers there are API's. RSS will live on for podcast delivery (at least until apple dropsre-invents" podcasting) but other than that, let's just let RSS rest in peace.

leon_ 15y ago
news in 140 chars ... reminds me of that movie where they water their plants with soda.
- eagleal 15y ago
  It's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy
- chopsueyar 15y ago
  It was an energy drink, "Brawndo", not soda.
brazzy 15y ago
Couldn't disagree more. Neither Twitter nor Facebook, and least of all every dinky little site offering a homebrewed API are an even remotely adequate replacement for RSS. Twitter and Facebook have NOT made anything easier for normal people, they just managed to get the mindshare to force people to deal with their inadequacies, whereas a million different sites offering RSS feeds somehow never turned into something everyone and their dog "had to" use to be cool. I use RSS daily as my main news source, check Facebook maybe every other day and never could figure out the point of Twitter.

hollerith 15y ago

I notice that Google Reader still lets a person subscribe to someone's Twitter.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

riams 15y ago

I've fully abandoned Google Reader for Twitter.

chopsueyar 15y ago

"Embrace and extend." Way to support open source, guys!

randomgeek 15y ago

140 char posts are not what one should should subscribe to via. a RSS reader. Though I stand for open standards I don't really think that it is crucial that Twitter and Facebook supports RSS. Especially not Facebook - Twitter because it is more like the medias that I subscribe to; blogs, newssources and so on...

elgenie 15y ago

At least from the FB standpoint, "kill RSS" is quite an exaggeration. The code correcting the oversight that removed the links for RSS feeds in latest redesign of Page profiles should be going out tomorrow (5/10/11). Note that the feeds themselves (e.g. https://www.facebook.com/feeds/page.php?id=9445547199&format=rss20 https://www.facebook.com/feeds/page.php?id=9445547199&fo...) were unaffected. /me added back the Page RSS feeds during a hackathon last year

imwilsonxu 15y ago

For me, reading rss is like reading newspapers or books: Better contents polished for readers, but less interactions(with authors or others readers). On the other hand, reading facebook status or tweets is like listening or chatting with friends. Contents are impromptu and often out of context. However, it's much easier to interact.

bugmenot 15y ago

If you load someones twitter page without javascript the link to the rss feed is still presented in the usual way. ie, loading up this page: http://twitter.com/BBC http://twitter.com/BBC with javascript turned off makes an rss icon appear in the address bar (in opera). And in the source we see: * <link rel="alternate" href="http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/19701628.rss http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/19701628.rss title="BBC's Tweets" type="application/rss+xml" /> * <link rel="alternate" href="http://twitter.com/favorites/19701628.rss http://twitter.com/favorites/19701628.rss title="BBC's Favorites" type="application/rss+xml" />