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Sadly, RSS is like many other platforms without a default client. Well-engineered, extremely useful, but impossible to explain to non-technical people. Before y
by asolove 15y ago
Sadly, RSS is like many other platforms without a default client. Well-engineered, extremely useful, but impossible to explain to non-technical people. Before you can use RSS, you have to know what it is, look for it on a website, and have a client downloaded or an account on a web service. For this to make sense you need a mental model of a server with information, a client requesting it, and a technical specification that teaches them to talk to each other.
Compare with Facebook or Twitter, where you click a link to the default client and can start using it right away.
Ultimately, you can google "Twitter" or "Facebook" and start using the platform right away. Google "RSS" and you get technical explanations, a Wikipedia page, and competing choices for feed readers.
- brlewis 15y agoPosting to Twitter and Facebook does not preclude providing RSS.
- hollerith 15y agoRight, but after one of these big social platforms eliminates the other big social platforms, it will be in its best interests to stop providing RSS feeds because that will be an easy way to force more people to use their platform. (And non-techies will not take the trouble to post the same post to Twitter or Facebook and to a service that provides RSS.)
- mmahemoff 15y agoI suspect some individuals inside companies are motivated to increase number of followers/fans, and figure an RSS option would dilute that figure. More likely, it's just ignorance ... Facebook and Twitter show you're down with the kids.
- bryanlarsen 15y agoFirefox made an attempt at this problem with an RSS icon, but failed.
- hollerith 15y agoNo one publishes only on RSS, so the non-techie's can go to a web page to see what's new on the Foo blog. I think a bigger problem is that Foo blog's web site is different in hundreds of small details from Bar blog's web site. In other words, one reason non-techies are more likely to follow someone on FB is that they are already familiar with FB's user interface. The bigger problem though comes when the non-techie has written something online that I want to read...
- fistofjohnwayne 15y agoI think you bring up a few of the reasons why I'm finding RSS feeds more difficult to locate on sites. Several times recently I've only been able to find them by knowing where WordPress automatically publishes the feed or by viewing the source of the page.
- anamax 15y ago> Sadly, RSS is like many other platforms without a default client. While that may be true, I'll bet that almost everyone has a decent client. For example, IE7-9 all have RSS readers. Yes, they manage and create subscriptions. The RSS icon turns orange and becomes active when there's a feed available on the current page. I'll bet that the other major browsers do as well or better.
- sp332 15y agoFirefox 4 removed the RSS icon from the address bar on pages that have RSS feeds. Chrome doesn't even have an RSS parser now.
- jarek 15y agoSorry to hear. Opera has an RSS icon in address bar and a built-in RSS reader. Subscribing to a feed is three clicks: first on the icon, second on the feed to use (admittedly problematic), third on Subscribe button on feed preview page.
- maigret 15y agoI guess this is not in the interest of Google to promote free and decentralized information systems - how can they then analyze it and sell ads with that. They rather push a centralized stream à la Google+.
- adambyrtek 15y agoGoogle search indexes and analyzes the whole web, which is by definition a decentralised information system. How would popularisation of RSS negatively affect their business? Not to mention that Google Reader is still the best web RSS client out there.
- maigret 15y agoWell then why do they want to close it?
- ImprovedSilence 15y agoI started using google reader when I came from a completely non-tech understanding of the web. Heck, I still just paste in the website of a blog I want to follow into google reader, and it pulls up the RSS, should it have one. One huge plus of RSS is that I follow lots of artsy things, so I get the actual pictures, not unlike tumblr (which also is, IMO, a far better mechanism than twitter or FB for following blogs/sites).
- Periodic 15y agoI'm a fairly technical person and I've started just putting sites homepage URLs into Google Reader. I'm tired of having to go to the site, hunt for a little RSS button, or if they don't have one I have to pull up the source and find the meta or link tag or whatever and then copy out the HREF because Chrome doesn't have an RSS button in the location bar. I feel like RSS has gotten harder to use lately.
- alxv 15y agoThere is an official Chrome extension for RSS: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nlbjncdgjeocebhnmkbbbdekmmmcbfjd https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nlbjncdgjeocebhnmk... I have no idea why it is not part of the default install though.
- nl 15y agoPutting the url of the site in should usually work. There is a standard called RSS autodiscovery that lets a reader discover the address of a RSS feed without there being a badge on the site etc.
- mapgrep 15y agoThe web has no default client. Email has no default client. TV has no default client. The telephone network, after a lengthy battle involving AT&T, has no default client. SMS has no default client. Somehow, people find a way to use these things. It took many years from when the first web browser was written in 1990 to get to ubiquity. We got RSS in 1999 and it is in widespread use among web publishers; I can't think of a major news site that does not use it. Where we are lacking is in user uptake. Give it time. Open standards always take longer, but one will eventually get us there.
- randallsquared 15y agoSMS and the telephone network did have default clients for a long time after they were introduced -- in both cases, the default client was the phone you had. Mosaic, Navigator, and IE were all so close that Wikipedia describes the latter two as being based on Mosaic. It does help adoption to have a single, obvious client, but a close second would be having the clients be indistinguishable save for branding for non-expert users.
- lukifer 15y agoThe default client for email and web is the one that comes with your computer. The default client for SMS is your phone. The default client for TV is to turn it on and flip through channels. The point of the OP was not about having a single standardized client, but rather having the functionality baked into product(s) without the user having to seek it out on their own, or even learn what "RSS" means. The feeble attempts from Safari and Firefox are the closest we've come, but ideally this was a push that should have happened at the OS level, both on desktop and mobile.
- jarek 15y agoThere is no default client for television transmissions. You have to buy a receiver and they're not trivially cheap. You even have to decide which one you want, picking from a dizzying variety of brands, models and sizes.
- 15y ago
- mikepk 15y agoAs someone who started an RSS-based company (that's now defunct) I think the issue isn't just a lack of a default client, it's a lack of a tangible conceptual model for people. I spent years explaining the RSS concept, testing lots of different metaphors, and almost always got the "blank stare" or "nodding along so you think I understand". I think the deeper problem is that it takes a kind of abstract thinking, that content and presentation are different things and that the content of a website or blog can be a resource as much as a particular presentation of it, that's just not normal for non-technical people. I think most people still think of websites as "places" you "go" to, and the idea of the content/data packaged in a format for easy syndication is a mental leap regardless of the metaphor you use.
- sluckxz 15y agoReading your second paragraph made me chuckle. Your point is likely spot on but I couldn't help thinking how most of that paragraph involved jargon that most people I know would get glossy eyed over. I wonder if rewording it to laymans or non 'geeks' terms might help. Information on a webpage and 'the' webpage are not exactly the same. Rss uses information from the webpage to create a title and a short description in a way that you can view hundreds of titles and descriptions very quickly. When you find a title and or description that interests you a single click delivers the webpage in its authors intended form... I think you're correct. If somebody said that to me before I had used Rss I might have glossed over as well. edit: Sorry about the defunct company part.
- mikepk 15y agoHeh, I was intentionally not using any of the explanatory metaphors. :) Trust me, in the many years we were at it I tried lots and lots of non-jargony, more-concrete, ways to get the concept across. I never found the one that seemed to click with everyone. We also had the additional problem of trying to be the "next generation" of using RSS (application platform, dynamic filters, etc...) before anyone other than tech-inclined people "got" the first generation. Learned lots of painful lessons from that company. :)
- maigret 15y ago
- voidfiles 15y agoWhat does it matter that most people can't use RSS. Even if 1% of the internet population uses RSS it's still a useful technology. People can learn how to use these things over time, maybe a long time. The knowledge can be transmitted.
- baby 15y agoWell, beta users really don't need to use RSS. It's like IRC. You have to dig into it if you want to use it, and you would so because you have to. Actually I stopped using RSS years ago. It's a time consumer, you lose the charisma of every different websites and their way of browsing (I don't see myself using reddit or HN's RSS), a lot of website just truncate their articles in their RSS feed...
- sciurus 15y agoI agree that RSS is a poor way to consume to consume social news sites like Hacker News. It's a fantastic way to consume blogs, especially infrequently-updated ones. Why would I flip though 100 tabs in my browser every day to see which ten blogs have new posts when I can open my RSS reader instead and see all the new content at once?
- baby 15y agoExactly, that's the time consuming part. Not a lot of people are following a 100 blog, I was. I remember checking my rss reader every 2 minutes to check a new article. The only solution I found to get back to normal life was ditching my rss reader. Now I just the read 3-4 blogs frequently and check the others from time to time. I enjoy the design of each blogs. It's part of the atmosphere and of the read.
- gnosis 15y agoRSS has been my preferred interface to HN, news sites, and blogs for years. Having to go to websites to get the same information is so cumbersome, primitive, and time consuming in comparison. I don't really care about the "charisma" of websites. I'm much more interested in just getting the information they have to offer in the most efficient way possible. I couldn't consume nearly as much information efficiently without something like RSS.
- baby 15y agoReally depends on how you feed on information. Like I said in another response I was an avid user of Google Reader and netnewswire. I was checking it every 2minutes to read a new article, I had basically no life beside my rss reader (and before that I had no life because of IRC, another story). The only way to go back to my normal life was to ditch my RSS readers. Now I'm enjoying a few websites and I realize I really don't need all those informations. Some websites I don't even need to check their new articles "in time". And I found out I did care about the "charisma" of websites. It was like reading a different news paper, different texture, different layout, different feeling. I understand both part, but I think very few people need a RSS reader (do we all read 100+ websites everyday? I was and I don't anymore). And I think a lot of RSS reader users would actually enjoy going back to the tranquility of reading directly through a blog's interface. I know it's less practical, you change the UI everytime and if you read a lot you only need the information. But juste give it a try, don't use your RSS reader for like a week, or at least a few days if you really need it. You'll see a difference :) TL;DR:Internet doesn't have to be all about information.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]