10 ms·

This quote is exactly right: "Having only the content I want to see only be shown when I want to see it with the freedom to jump between readers as I please, a

This quote is exactly right: "Having only the content I want to see only be shown when I want to see it with the freedom to jump between readers as I please, all with no ads? For me, no other service comes close to the flexibility, robustness, and overall ease-of-use that RSS offers." I always wonder why they aren't as popular now. It takes more work to add site to a reader, and more effort to even use one I suppose. And maybe it's also missing the social aspect that people seem to love? I assume they'll be popular again some day like vinyl and static web sites.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> I always wonder why they aren't as popular now. 1) Google makes really quite good RSS reader (Google Reader) 2) Everybody switches to it, competition atrophies 3) Google shuts it down
- sgtfrankieboy 6y ago
  Google shutting down their RSS reader didn't really have an impact. They shut it down back in March of 2013. If you look at the trends graph[1] for RSS it was dying out for years. [1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F0n5tx https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F0...
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    Long-term Google trends graphs are kind of useless because they're a percentage of queries over a period of time when the demographics of the user base was changing as millions of new people got on the internet. Here's the one for javascript: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=javascript https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=javascri... Clearly javascript has been slowly dying out. But wait, that can't be right. They're also a poor proxy for usage because the existing user base with feeds already set up doesn't have to do a search query to continue using it, so if a large number of them lose access at once, it's barely a blip because they wouldn't be doing searches for it either way.
    - edgartaor 6y ago
      Do you know a better alternative? I would like to know
      - loup-vaillant 6y ago
        You probably didn't want to come across this way, but we should note that the absence of a better metric is not by itself a reason to use a bad one. If a metric is sufficiently decorrelated with the thing we want to measure, it should be ignored altogether, regardless of whether we have anything better.
MereInterest 6y ago
As far as I can tell, because RSS requires the cooperation of actors who have no incentive to cooperate. If I use an RSS reader to support content, then it is under my control when I read it, if I read it, and what format to read it under. I can view the content however I'd like, and no tracking is there. All of these are unambiguously good things for me, and are anathema for the advertising industry. I cannot use RSS to read a site unless that site provides an RSS feed. Sites whose primary goal is to bring in ad revenue, rather than building a community, have no incentive to provide RSS feeds.
- kgwxd 6y ago
  I'm perfectly happy just getting headlines with links, which seems most common these days, at least for what I subscribe to. It requires I go to their site to get the content where they can (try to) shove anything they want in my face and run whatever trackers they normally do.
  - AlecSchueler 6y ago
    This why I personally gave up RSS. I used to enjoy reading things in my RSS reader where I could set things up to be clear to me. Once they started providing only links back to the WWW browser where everything was hard to read I gave up and now I just suffer reading in the WWW browser and frankly don't read nearly half as much online content as a result.
    - iFreilicht 6y ago
      Aren't there RSS-readers that offer something like the reader-mode you get on web-browsers?
      - dmje 6y ago
        Yeh, Reeder on mac supports this I think
      - lightbulbjim 6y ago
throwaway2245 6y ago
> Having only the content I want to see only be shown when I want to see it I would rather not do my own content discovery and content curation: I see those as literal chores that have to be done before I can consume content. Like all chores, I'm not keen to do them. Despite years of practice, I'm still not confident I am great at them on my own, and I have the option to employ someone more skilled. Twitter has done a good job of these chores, making discovery and curation easier (like the parent article, I feel frustrated that Twitter is now broken from this point of view); TikTok does a great job, surely better than I could do myself.
numpad0 6y ago
Probably for same reasons as why slot machines with minimalist aesthetics don’t exist
johndhowell 6y ago
"I always wonder why they aren't as popular now. It takes more work to add site to a reader, and more effort to even use one I suppose" I know for me, I didn't know what RSS truly was until like.. last year? I remember seeing the icon and all that on various sites growing up but I never clicked them as I didn't know it was a straight feed of content. Whereas last year I read some article or blog about it dying and I decided to look it up. Now it's the only way I read or watch any content becuase it's exactly what I want: straight content with no bs.
breischl 6y ago
>I always wonder why they aren't as popular now. IMO it's a lot of reasons. A big one, that was the case even before social media, is the inherent geekiness of it. "RSS" is an acronym after a geek's heart, most people don't like it. The subscription process is complicated. Go to the site, find the feed (which one? There might be a bunch! eg, main feed, topic feed, comments-per-post feed, etc), take that URL and paste it into your feed reader, then look at that and... you got linked back to the site you were on? Yay... There have been various attempts to streamline this via in-page "add to reader" widgets back in the day, browser plugins, etc. But it was never as frictionless as the Facebook/Twitter/Reddit "follow" button. Responding to things is harder. There's no comment/like/whatever button right there, you have to go to the site, figure out what's going on there, maybe sign up for yet another damn account if you want to comment. Some sites don't even have comment sections! Or maybe they point you to FB or Twitter anyway. Again there were partial solutions back in the day, but nothing as easy as modern social media. Last for today, it's not nearly as addictive. Some people (including the author and myself) like that about it... but it doesn't drive adoption nearly as well. >I assume they'll be popular again some day like vinyl and static web sites. I think they'll always be niche-popular with geeks, long-form content creators, open web advocates (the "EFF crowd" I guess) and so forth. But I don't think it'll ever be mainstream. At best it could serve as the substrate for something else that becomes mainstream. Anyway, just my 2 cents from hanging around this space for a decade+.
- dialamac 6y ago
  > A big one, that was the case even before social media, is the inherent geekiness of it. "RSS" is an acronym after a geek's heart, most people don't like it. Like WWW, RCA, GE.. (the latter two of the most recognizable and successful brands of all time). got it. (And no one cares what an acronym stands for anyway.. you don’t need to know this to make use of it, it has no bearing. RSS is pretty catchy as far as branding goes.) The subscription process is simplicity itself and there are still some tremendously mainstream popular and well designed for a general audience readers like Feedly. I’ve almost never had to manually cut and paste a feed link (I think the cases were dealing with someone’s broken Linux desktop). Clicking on a link on an iPhone will open it in a reader or take you the App Store to install one. RSS is simply missing the key feature of social networking “engagement” and these walled gardens are heavily promoted and in your face. It’s not a geekiness issue it’s an attention issue.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

> I always wonder why they aren't as popular now. 1) Google makes really quite good RSS reader (Google Reader) 2) Everybody switches to it, competition atrophies 3) Google shuts it down

sgtfrankieboy 6y ago
Google shutting down their RSS reader didn't really have an impact. They shut it down back in March of 2013. If you look at the trends graph[1] for RSS it was dying out for years. [1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F0n5tx https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F0...
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  Long-term Google trends graphs are kind of useless because they're a percentage of queries over a period of time when the demographics of the user base was changing as millions of new people got on the internet. Here's the one for javascript: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=javascript https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=javascri... Clearly javascript has been slowly dying out. But wait, that can't be right. They're also a poor proxy for usage because the existing user base with feeds already set up doesn't have to do a search query to continue using it, so if a large number of them lose access at once, it's barely a blip because they wouldn't be doing searches for it either way.
  - edgartaor 6y ago
    Do you know a better alternative? I would like to know
    - loup-vaillant 6y ago
      You probably didn't want to come across this way, but we should note that the absence of a better metric is not by itself a reason to use a bad one. If a metric is sufficiently decorrelated with the thing we want to measure, it should be ignored altogether, regardless of whether we have anything better.

MereInterest 6y ago

As far as I can tell, because RSS requires the cooperation of actors who have no incentive to cooperate. If I use an RSS reader to support content, then it is under my control when I read it, if I read it, and what format to read it under. I can view the content however I'd like, and no tracking is there. All of these are unambiguously good things for me, and are anathema for the advertising industry. I cannot use RSS to read a site unless that site provides an RSS feed. Sites whose primary goal is to bring in ad revenue, rather than building a community, have no incentive to provide RSS feeds.

kgwxd 6y ago
I'm perfectly happy just getting headlines with links, which seems most common these days, at least for what I subscribe to. It requires I go to their site to get the content where they can (try to) shove anything they want in my face and run whatever trackers they normally do.
- AlecSchueler 6y ago
  This why I personally gave up RSS. I used to enjoy reading things in my RSS reader where I could set things up to be clear to me. Once they started providing only links back to the WWW browser where everything was hard to read I gave up and now I just suffer reading in the WWW browser and frankly don't read nearly half as much online content as a result.
  - iFreilicht 6y ago
    Aren't there RSS-readers that offer something like the reader-mode you get on web-browsers?
    - dmje 6y ago
      Yeh, Reeder on mac supports this I think
    - lightbulbjim 6y ago

throwaway2245 6y ago

> Having only the content I want to see only be shown when I want to see it I would rather not do my own content discovery and content curation: I see those as literal chores that have to be done before I can consume content. Like all chores, I'm not keen to do them. Despite years of practice, I'm still not confident I am great at them on my own, and I have the option to employ someone more skilled. Twitter has done a good job of these chores, making discovery and curation easier (like the parent article, I feel frustrated that Twitter is now broken from this point of view); TikTok does a great job, surely better than I could do myself.

numpad0 6y ago

Probably for same reasons as why slot machines with minimalist aesthetics don’t exist

johndhowell 6y ago

"I always wonder why they aren't as popular now. It takes more work to add site to a reader, and more effort to even use one I suppose" I know for me, I didn't know what RSS truly was until like.. last year? I remember seeing the icon and all that on various sites growing up but I never clicked them as I didn't know it was a straight feed of content. Whereas last year I read some article or blog about it dying and I decided to look it up. Now it's the only way I read or watch any content becuase it's exactly what I want: straight content with no bs.

breischl 6y ago

>I always wonder why they aren't as popular now. IMO it's a lot of reasons. A big one, that was the case even before social media, is the inherent geekiness of it. "RSS" is an acronym after a geek's heart, most people don't like it. The subscription process is complicated. Go to the site, find the feed (which one? There might be a bunch! eg, main feed, topic feed, comments-per-post feed, etc), take that URL and paste it into your feed reader, then look at that and... you got linked back to the site you were on? Yay... There have been various attempts to streamline this via in-page "add to reader" widgets back in the day, browser plugins, etc. But it was never as frictionless as the Facebook/Twitter/Reddit "follow" button. Responding to things is harder. There's no comment/like/whatever button right there, you have to go to the site, figure out what's going on there, maybe sign up for yet another damn account if you want to comment. Some sites don't even have comment sections! Or maybe they point you to FB or Twitter anyway. Again there were partial solutions back in the day, but nothing as easy as modern social media. Last for today, it's not nearly as addictive. Some people (including the author and myself) like that about it... but it doesn't drive adoption nearly as well. >I assume they'll be popular again some day like vinyl and static web sites. I think they'll always be niche-popular with geeks, long-form content creators, open web advocates (the "EFF crowd" I guess) and so forth. But I don't think it'll ever be mainstream. At best it could serve as the substrate for something else that becomes mainstream. Anyway, just my 2 cents from hanging around this space for a decade+.

dialamac 6y ago
> A big one, that was the case even before social media, is the inherent geekiness of it. "RSS" is an acronym after a geek's heart, most people don't like it. Like WWW, RCA, GE.. (the latter two of the most recognizable and successful brands of all time). got it. (And no one cares what an acronym stands for anyway.. you don’t need to know this to make use of it, it has no bearing. RSS is pretty catchy as far as branding goes.) The subscription process is simplicity itself and there are still some tremendously mainstream popular and well designed for a general audience readers like Feedly. I’ve almost never had to manually cut and paste a feed link (I think the cases were dealing with someone’s broken Linux desktop). Clicking on a link on an iPhone will open it in a reader or take you the App Store to install one. RSS is simply missing the key feature of social networking “engagement” and these walled gardens are heavily promoted and in your face. It’s not a geekiness issue it’s an attention issue.