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Increasing the surface area of blogging
- pkdpic 4y agoI heard somewhere that RSS is actually more popular than it's ever been because its used under the surface for apple podcasts. Not sure if thats true but it sounds true so maybe it's true. PS I love RSS, it plays by Tim BL's rule of simple rules make complex ecosystems.
- cube00 4y agoGiven all the itunes custom tags I see in RSS feeds of some of the podcasts I listen to I'd say that's a safe bet.
- nicbou 4y agoUnfortunately there's a growing interest in building walled gardens around podcasts. It used to be just RSS and audio.
- paulgb 4y agoYeah, it's a bummer. I actually appreciate that iTunes still exposes the underlying RSS feed (at least programmatically), because for some podcasts that only link to walled-garden platforms, it's the only way to reveal the RSS feed.
- kixiQu 4y ago> OPML is an outliner technology that simply links to a bunch of feeds. Here’s an example of an OPML file from Vaughn Tan. Nice. > The problem with feeds is that they render in the browser like a bunch of code. They’re not at all user friendly. I read this and was thinking oh no! No! You can absolutely make it readable! And then it turned out he linked to mine. :D If you want something a bit less over-the-top and more sensible, Ton has one: https://zylstra.org/opml/tonzylstra.opml https://zylstra.org/opml/tonzylstra.opml
- mikae1 4y agohttps://maya.land/blogroll.opml https://maya.land/blogroll.opml is also one the best examples I've seen.
- giantrobot 4y agoReading the post I was itching to point out XSL style sheets. They're so useful but underutilized. They're not the easiest to write and there's essentially no good tooling around them.
- mro_name 4y agoindeed, neat e.g. for nicely (with modifiable styling) viewing immutable raw data like messages: https://mro.name/microblog https://mro.name/microblog Have mutable design on immutable data is awesome for long-term concerns. And having the data raw!
- giantrobot 4y agoThe raw data + styling model is ideal to me. You've got one data endpoint for both people and machines that's equally useful to both.
- mro_name 4y agoI wonder why it's seen so rare. Are people afraid to disclose the data? Ignorance about the possibility? SEO?
- chupchap 4y ago> The problem with feeds is that they render in the browser like a bunch of code This wasn't always the case.
- bariumbitmap 4y agoYup. Firefox had RSS support from first release in 2002 (inherited from Netscape, so even older than that) until 2018 when Mozilla decided it wasn't a priority. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18202028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18202028 https://www.gijsk.com/blog/2018/10/firefox-removes-core-product-support-for-rss-atom-feeds/ https://www.gijsk.com/blog/2018/10/firefox-removes-core-prod... I don't think Chrome ever supported RSS, though.
- giantrobot 4y agoEven when browsers don't explicitly support RSS feeds they can be transformed with XSL. A dedicated feed reader will ignore the XSL reference but the browser will do the transform and give you HTML which can itself reference CSS for nice styling.
- dixego 4y agoI was just thinking the other day about how I wish there was a social network with the rhythm/vibes of email and hey look, fraidycat turns whatever into basically that!
- gorb314 4y agoSo I was thinking about the fediverse and blogging, and if we already have blogs then why not publish them using ActivityPub? As in, using your fediverse account to follow blogs instead of just other federated accounts. I know there is an rss-activitypub server out there. Are there other projects/solutions like that? Something that'll work for static blogs?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- derbOac 4y agoMaybe not really what you have in mind, but write.as as a blogging platform I think supports distribution of new posts through activitypub. I might be wrong about that though, as I never looked into it closely.
- zdunn 4y agoYou could ask around the indieweb irc, https://chat.indieweb.org/ https://chat.indieweb.org/ Some of the people there have messed around with syndicating to ActivityPub. I think one of them maintains a Wordpress activitypub plugin
- gorb314 4y agoGreat suggestion, I'll check it the indieweb link
- senectus1 4y agoneed a way to link microblogging with long form blogging and viceversa. but effortlessly, when you make a comment in twitter you should be able to link it to a particular post in long form, or not, but without having to chew up character count or screen space with a long form URL. and you want to be able to post a long form blog and "collect" micro posts of your and maybe others into it as well.
- dmje 4y agoOPML has always seemed to me to be a hugely underused technology. A list of someone's feeds is a reasonable indicator of their interests, and bashing different OPML files together feels like it'd be a good way of finding other people with interests that cross with your own. Related: I've only just now signed up for a newsletter on Substack and it turns out SS is basically a feed reader. Like - the iOS app is literally a feed reader. A list of articles, the concept of what is read vs unread, a vague stab at a discovery mechanism. It's Feedly, only not as good. I hadn't realised how much hype surrounds so little that is actually new...
- giantrobot 4y agoOPML is/was criminally underused. I think that lies at the feet of Wordpress. Early Wordpress supported a blogroll but needed a plug-in for OPML support. Wordpress then moved blogroll support before finally removing it. The (arguably) most popular blogging system ignoring OPML meant feeds were much rarer than RSS. The rarity of OPML feeds kept them from getting any native browser support. Most of the time you only see them as a way to import/export a list of feeds from dedicated RSS readers.
- wardedVibe 4y agoSub-stack isn't a tech company, its a media outlet that focuses on monetizing semi-famous blog-writers. I guess it has less of a schtick than many media outlets, besides contrarian, "the mainstream is dumb" style takes.
- stanislavb 4y agoIf you are interested in alternative feed representation, I'd invite you to give a go to my feed reader that was inspired by Fraidyc.at, yet offers a bit more configuration. For example, setting different priority per feed source or category, and how many items you'd like to see per source. That way, you get to have more control over what you read. And it offers full OPML import/export. I.e. you can come and go whenever you want. The project is https://lenns.io https://lenns.io
- stanislavb 4y agop.s. there's also the option to subscribe to site-headlines if a "blog"/site doesn't offer an RSS feed. That works automagically in 80-90% of the cases in which you'd expect it to work :)
- kkfx 4y agoSorry for being rude but... If you offer code to host the service autonomously we can came and go, otherwise being just able to import/export feeds is lock-in: already read feeds, saved articles, UI etc are the lock-in elements, for a serious RSS user. If your target is just offering an aggregator like "Google News for the content you want", well, I can understand but for people who want to control their source of information, reducing propaganda and crap of modern websites/services, it's not a real option...
- lebaux 4y agoDemo or screenshots would help quite a bit, imho.
- 0xdeadb00f 4y agoSolid idea. But as others have said a demo or some example screen caps would be nice.
- kkfx 4y agoA different point of view: why blogging (witch is not that anyway)? Normally is for telling something to a public. Now arrive the visibility issue: if to have a public you need constantly publishing or you are a media company or your quality at a certain point in time decrease and you just enter the common "sci-pattern" of publish-or-perish, with equal results: a big load of crap who hide the little quality that still exists. RSS help because allow the public to follow rare-posting inconstant sources issueless: if you select not too few nor too many you get daily content around the desired quantity still noticing any new content from the sources you like. At that point arrive the discoverability problem: how to find good contents. IMVHO the sole way is the classic Usenet: a public aggregator no one really own of cohorts of people with similar interests (groups) BUT not limiting them to any particular cohort (subscribe groups you like at Reddit we divide users by, at Facebook by, ...) because those groups are formed out of their posters for their poster interests NOT for some corporate/business purpose. Essentially: the classic usenet + the classic web 1.0. The web part is just a way to see content and decide, RSS is the mean to read it once selected, ngs to follow changes. Anything else I know/see is by large far less effective.
- ReactNative22 4y agoWhat do you think of Reddit? Subreddits have kinda replaced usenet groups of old. OR is it too much moderation for you? Also how to handle spam, thats been a killer for usenet lately
- Jaruzel 4y ago> Subreddits have kinda replaced usenet groups of old. Ah, but USENet is decentralised, Reddit is not. > Also how to handle spam, thats been a killer for usenet lately Last time I checked, the spam still being posted on USENet is Zombie-spam by long forgotten bots. A strong kill-list in a good client should easily minimise that problem. There has been a revival of USENet by the smolnet and Web 1.0 people - some of the groups are active with almost no spam.
- kkfx 4y ago
- Karrot_Kream 4y agoAdd Webmentions and you have a roughshod social network. You can get the river of content and their replies :)
- captn3m0 4y agoI feel like OPML was designed as a “Export/Import” format, and that has led to it being underused. OMPL URLs hosting lists of feeds should be automatically updated across feed readers following an OPML feed. You should be able to “subscribe” to OPML feeds the way you subscribe to RSS feeds. The only reader I’m aware that supports this is Tt-rss. FreshRSS plans to support it soon: https://github.com/FreshRSS/FreshRSS/issues/4191 https://github.com/FreshRSS/FreshRSS/issues/4191 I think this ability will allow for a lot of important, and cool usecases (your follow list on Twitter/YouTube/GitHub) is just an OPML feed that you subscribe to.
- kixiQu 4y agoMiniflux lets you import an OPML file from a URL (as well as download/upload), but it doesn't automatically update anything.
- dewey 4y ago> Turns out you can do the same thing with OPML files. Here’s an OPML file nicely styled for the browser. Clicking on that with Safari has the first row flickering a lot for some reason.