5 ms·

Remember when every Facebook page and profile had an RSS feed? And FB messenger was XMPP compatible so you could use it with bitlbee and your favourite IRC cli

Remember when every Facebook page and profile had an RSS feed? And FB messenger was XMPP compatible so you could use it with bitlbee and your favourite IRC client. And you could email people @facebook.com and it would show up in their messages. Google gets all the “credit” for killing RSS, but there’s plenty of dismay to be spread around!

agumonkey 5y ago
I'll give them one pinch of excuse, they probably thought they could design a better system. Start all new, from scratch, no more rss/mail/irc... It failed.
pjerem 5y ago
Well, I remember. That was when the word « standards » meant something.
- masklinn 5y ago
  Mostly it was the usual: large corporations use standards to gain a foothold when they're minor players, then either drop or proprietarily extend said standards to they can close it up when they get a dominant position.
  - foepys 5y ago
    Don't forget that you need to use OAuth for everything so even if they have a simple API, they can shut your whole app's access down at any time, not just individual users.
soorajsanker 5y ago
Totally! May be a random thought but I feel like social media is crowded and having multiple platform is going to kill the "SHARING" part and it has now become "what gets higher ranking" kind of a stuff. Imagine if all social media posts were having RSS feeds and with one application we could all scroll through different feeds!
spaetzleesser 5y ago
That's a really sad development. If companies like Google or Facebook had been as big in the 90s I bet we wouldn't have E-mail but a set of proprietary, incompatible E-mail like services. It seems these giants get big with the help of standards and then they kill them once they have enough momentum. "Embrace, extend, extinguish" is not only a Microsoft thing.
- kazen44 5y ago
  another good example of this is Google's influence in regards to web standards. things like http2/3 and quic for one. and their influence on the browser market aswell.
  - musingsole 5y ago
    It's now extending into the very infrastructure of software development with kubernetes.
    - spc476 5y ago
      it's just Google externalizing their training costs.
- gorgoiler 5y ago
  We had a set of proprietary incompatible email-like services. AOL and Compuserve — let’s use numeric addresses so it’s kinda like phone numbers, right?! Also, whatever MSN tried to be when it first escaped from the lab. Didn’t Novell have some kind of email-substitute messaging product that they tried to jam into their proprietary TCPIP competitor, as well?
  - genewitch 5y ago
    All from at least 2.5/3.0 on was username@aol.com for email. They were also not good at security, as you could spoof emails coming from any domain if you used their smtp servers directly - but they had regular email addresses. I never used compuserve or prodigy, however ICQ used numerical user IDs.
harshitaneja 5y ago
I was in school back then and had recently discovered email spoofing and thought of trying it with facebook email addresses and it would send the email message as messenger message from spoofed to the spoofee without it being visible on the spoofed's chat. It led to so many shenanigans over the holidays that winter.
axby 5y ago
It is sad, but some good news for anyone considering trying RSS: * all reddit subreddits can be turned into an rss feed by adding ".rss" after the URL, e.g. https://reddit.com/r/news/.rss https://reddit.com/r/news/.rss * YouTube still supports RSS, but it is well hidden and I am worried that it will be silently removed at some point. * HN supports RSS! * many major news sites still offer RSS, though it's often hard to find the feed. Reuters shut it down about 1.5 years ago
- Anthony-G 5y ago
  I unsubscribed from Reuters’ feeds a couple of years ago but it seems they still provide some feeds: https://www.reutersagency.com/en/reutersbest/reuters-best-rss-feeds/ https://www.reutersagency.com/en/reutersbest/reuters-best-rs...
  - axby 5y ago
    I had no idea this existed. It looks like it's "reutersagency.com", which may be different from reuters.com? These are the results that I get in my RSS reader, they seem very different from https://www.reuters.com https://www.reuters.com: newsboat 2.10.2 - Articles in feed 'Reuters News Agency' (10 unread, 10 total) - https://www.reutersagency.com/feed/?taxonomy=best-regions&post_type=best 1 N 2021-10-20 06:44 1.2K Reuters exclusively reports Renault sees bigger production hit from chip shortage; market reacts 2 N 2021-10-18 06:52 1.3K Reuters exclusively reports India presses Qatar for delayed LNG as power crisis mounts 3 N 2021-10-18 06:50 1.4K Reuters reports Fortescue’s Forrest says Australia must commit to carbon cuts to keep green energy advantage 4 N 2021-10-18 05:15 1.3K Reuters reveals U.S. to lift restrictions Nov 8 for vaccinated foreign travelers; market reacts 5 N 2021-10-18 04:00 2.5K Reuters impact: U.S. lawmakers say Amazon may have lied to Congress, Senator Warren urges breakup, India retailers want probe after Reute 6 N 2021-10-15 06:56 1.4K Reuters reveals how the illicit copper trade is sapping South Africa 7 N 2021-10-15 06:46 1.4K Reuters exclusively reports Italy considering extending bank merger incentives to mid-2022 8 N 2021-10-15 06:43 1.9K Reuters first to report Evergrande’s $1.7 bln Hong Kong HQ sale flops; CEO in Hong Kong for restructuring, asset sale talks 9 N 2021-10-14 11:44 1.9K Reuters ahead with key Turkish Central Bank news; market reacts 10 N 2021-10-14 08:38 1.5K Reuters ahead with news of German economic growth downgrade
stjohnswarts 5y ago
It's all about platform lockin. Although RSS sorta lives on at facebook. You can go to "public" groups and get an RSS feed. Anything that requires a login though is inaccessible to RSS for privacy reasons(?) .

agumonkey 5y ago

I'll give them one pinch of excuse, they probably thought they could design a better system. Start all new, from scratch, no more rss/mail/irc... It failed.

pjerem 5y ago

Well, I remember. That was when the word « standards » meant something.

masklinn 5y ago
Mostly it was the usual: large corporations use standards to gain a foothold when they're minor players, then either drop or proprietarily extend said standards to they can close it up when they get a dominant position.
- foepys 5y ago
  Don't forget that you need to use OAuth for everything so even if they have a simple API, they can shut your whole app's access down at any time, not just individual users.

soorajsanker 5y ago

Totally! May be a random thought but I feel like social media is crowded and having multiple platform is going to kill the "SHARING" part and it has now become "what gets higher ranking" kind of a stuff. Imagine if all social media posts were having RSS feeds and with one application we could all scroll through different feeds!

spaetzleesser 5y ago

That's a really sad development. If companies like Google or Facebook had been as big in the 90s I bet we wouldn't have E-mail but a set of proprietary, incompatible E-mail like services. It seems these giants get big with the help of standards and then they kill them once they have enough momentum. "Embrace, extend, extinguish" is not only a Microsoft thing.

kazen44 5y ago
another good example of this is Google's influence in regards to web standards. things like http2/3 and quic for one. and their influence on the browser market aswell.
- musingsole 5y ago
  It's now extending into the very infrastructure of software development with kubernetes.
  - spc476 5y ago
    it's just Google externalizing their training costs.
gorgoiler 5y ago
We had a set of proprietary incompatible email-like services. AOL and Compuserve — let’s use numeric addresses so it’s kinda like phone numbers, right?! Also, whatever MSN tried to be when it first escaped from the lab. Didn’t Novell have some kind of email-substitute messaging product that they tried to jam into their proprietary TCPIP competitor, as well?
- genewitch 5y ago
  All from at least 2.5/3.0 on was username@aol.com for email. They were also not good at security, as you could spoof emails coming from any domain if you used their smtp servers directly - but they had regular email addresses. I never used compuserve or prodigy, however ICQ used numerical user IDs.

harshitaneja 5y ago

I was in school back then and had recently discovered email spoofing and thought of trying it with facebook email addresses and it would send the email message as messenger message from spoofed to the spoofee without it being visible on the spoofed's chat. It led to so many shenanigans over the holidays that winter.

axby 5y ago

It is sad, but some good news for anyone considering trying RSS: * all reddit subreddits can be turned into an rss feed by adding ".rss" after the URL, e.g. https://reddit.com/r/news/.rss https://reddit.com/r/news/.rss * YouTube still supports RSS, but it is well hidden and I am worried that it will be silently removed at some point. * HN supports RSS! * many major news sites still offer RSS, though it's often hard to find the feed. Reuters shut it down about 1.5 years ago

Anthony-G 5y ago
I unsubscribed from Reuters’ feeds a couple of years ago but it seems they still provide some feeds: https://www.reutersagency.com/en/reutersbest/reuters-best-rss-feeds/ https://www.reutersagency.com/en/reutersbest/reuters-best-rs...
- axby 5y ago
  I had no idea this existed. It looks like it's "reutersagency.com", which may be different from reuters.com? These are the results that I get in my RSS reader, they seem very different from https://www.reuters.com https://www.reuters.com: newsboat 2.10.2 - Articles in feed 'Reuters News Agency' (10 unread, 10 total) - https://www.reutersagency.com/feed/?taxonomy=best-regions&post_type=best 1 N 2021-10-20 06:44 1.2K Reuters exclusively reports Renault sees bigger production hit from chip shortage; market reacts 2 N 2021-10-18 06:52 1.3K Reuters exclusively reports India presses Qatar for delayed LNG as power crisis mounts 3 N 2021-10-18 06:50 1.4K Reuters reports Fortescue’s Forrest says Australia must commit to carbon cuts to keep green energy advantage 4 N 2021-10-18 05:15 1.3K Reuters reveals U.S. to lift restrictions Nov 8 for vaccinated foreign travelers; market reacts 5 N 2021-10-18 04:00 2.5K Reuters impact: U.S. lawmakers say Amazon may have lied to Congress, Senator Warren urges breakup, India retailers want probe after Reute 6 N 2021-10-15 06:56 1.4K Reuters reveals how the illicit copper trade is sapping South Africa 7 N 2021-10-15 06:46 1.4K Reuters exclusively reports Italy considering extending bank merger incentives to mid-2022 8 N 2021-10-15 06:43 1.9K Reuters first to report Evergrande’s $1.7 bln Hong Kong HQ sale flops; CEO in Hong Kong for restructuring, asset sale talks 9 N 2021-10-14 11:44 1.9K Reuters ahead with key Turkish Central Bank news; market reacts 10 N 2021-10-14 08:38 1.5K Reuters ahead with news of German economic growth downgrade

stjohnswarts 5y ago

It's all about platform lockin. Although RSS sorta lives on at facebook. You can go to "public" groups and get an RSS feed. Anything that requires a login though is inaccessible to RSS for privacy reasons(?) .