thats a very good point, the ease of "propagating" the news of an RSS update surely plays a role in decisions publishers make but its more a client-side issue,

thats a very good point, the ease of "propagating" the news of an RSS update surely plays a role in decisions publishers make but its more a client-side issue, the degree to which the social graph of a person (e.g their list of email or phone contacts) is easily accessible / allows forwarding with comments etc. maybe the problem is that client app functionality has remained stagnant over decades? also consider that a lot of that easy social media virality is actually part of the problem