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I'm personally torn on RSS readers. Admittedly, I'm an almost entirely unproductive person lately, so I can't claim that it's because RSS is getting in the way

I'm personally torn on RSS readers. Admittedly, I'm an almost entirely unproductive person lately, so I can't claim that it's because RSS is getting in the way of other things. My chief suspicion is that as the number of subscriptions goes up, the propensity to fly through headlines rises as well, and so too does the efficiency of applying whatever criteria normally applies in choosing whether or not to read past a headline. What normally would be signal gets converted to noise because of the quantity needed to be consumed. Of course, one can always lower the number of subscriptions, but on the other hand, as one approaches lower bounds, the less sense RSS makes: one can simply and probably with more aesthetic pleasure, just make rounds to the website. Another point: there's more information and more of interest in a website than what gets printed as words in an article or in the images or whatever media that accompanies that article. And this is another suspicious element of RSS readers: they divorce content from the context in which it "originally" appears (scare quotes because of complexity). One can learn a good lot of important stuff about a content provider by looking at that provider's website, layout, design, ad priorities, etc. And not only about that provider, but about just what the hell the web looks like these days. If all I did was read via RSS, I'd probably have no clue. And more over, if all anybody ever did was read via RSS, websites themselves would be something else entirely and that something else probably wouldn't be much to look at. So really that's two chief suspicions: one, it's hard to find an optimal number of subscriptions (or even if there is such a thing); and two, RSS annihilates the experience of everything it can't contain. (I said I was torn, but I think I've started to convince myself that maybe I need to ditch Google Reader...)

fragsworth 15y ago
It seems there's a problem that needs to be solved, doesn't it? How's this for a startup idea: "Pandora for RSS" Users subscribe to a few feeds and provide feedback as to which articles they liked and disliked; the system correlates each individual with other similar users and starts providing suggestions, ratings, and sorts the articles in terms of "quality" that you defined by your votes. Then, as a user, you don't have to read everything - just the best recent posts. It can be treated more like a tailored/customized version of Reddit or Hacker News. You don't have to "catch up", you just go browse it when you feel like it.
- ryanklee 15y ago
  This really sounds to me exactly what sub-reddits already accomplish... am I missing something? In fact, I do use sub-reddits as a kind of rss alternative and for my less frequented ones will sort by Top for last week/month/etc. It works pretty well, but sub-reddits can only get specific to a certain extent, which is where a feed excels in. Say I want to keep up not just philosophy, and not just epistemology but phenomenological epistemology (doesn't matter what it actually is, just that it's highly specialized). No sub-reddit exists for such a thing (or anything like it that is so specialized). And I can rely on /r/philosophy or even /r/epistemology to feed me that content. What I really need is to get it all straight from the horses' mouths. Since posts are apt to be spread out, it doesn't make sense for me to continually check whatever blog or website for updated content: I want to be alerted when it's updated. Say I have 50 to 100 such websites of similarly specialized content. The situation will be the same for each, so it seems like it would make sense to get the alerts all in the same place, hence RSS. But the problem is that now there's just too much being pushed, even though each content provider is only pushing a little bit every week, it adds up fast (and this isn't even taking into account more general, entertainment-like content that invariably works its way into the feed). On the other hand, this is starting to sound less like a problem with technology and more of a problem with my personal information-junkie habits (that are unfortunately self-defeating).

fragsworth 15y ago

It seems there's a problem that needs to be solved, doesn't it? How's this for a startup idea: "Pandora for RSS" Users subscribe to a few feeds and provide feedback as to which articles they liked and disliked; the system correlates each individual with other similar users and starts providing suggestions, ratings, and sorts the articles in terms of "quality" that you defined by your votes. Then, as a user, you don't have to read everything - just the best recent posts. It can be treated more like a tailored/customized version of Reddit or Hacker News. You don't have to "catch up", you just go browse it when you feel like it.

ryanklee 15y ago
This really sounds to me exactly what sub-reddits already accomplish... am I missing something? In fact, I do use sub-reddits as a kind of rss alternative and for my less frequented ones will sort by Top for last week/month/etc. It works pretty well, but sub-reddits can only get specific to a certain extent, which is where a feed excels in. Say I want to keep up not just philosophy, and not just epistemology but phenomenological epistemology (doesn't matter what it actually is, just that it's highly specialized). No sub-reddit exists for such a thing (or anything like it that is so specialized). And I can rely on /r/philosophy or even /r/epistemology to feed me that content. What I really need is to get it all straight from the horses' mouths. Since posts are apt to be spread out, it doesn't make sense for me to continually check whatever blog or website for updated content: I want to be alerted when it's updated. Say I have 50 to 100 such websites of similarly specialized content. The situation will be the same for each, so it seems like it would make sense to get the alerts all in the same place, hence RSS. But the problem is that now there's just too much being pushed, even though each content provider is only pushing a little bit every week, it adds up fast (and this isn't even taking into account more general, entertainment-like content that invariably works its way into the feed). On the other hand, this is starting to sound less like a problem with technology and more of a problem with my personal information-junkie habits (that are unfortunately self-defeating).