8 ms·

All I see is people claiming RSS is dead, but I never stopped. Moving between various readers and landed on Feedly for iOS a few years ago. Love it.

Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
Same. It was a major loss when Google killed Reader, but I just found another app and kept on RSSing. NewsBlurr is my current choice (windows).
tootie 4y ago
RSS is still the default distribution system for podcasts. It's probably the thin thread that is keeping Spotify from building a walled garden for audio.
- marcrosoft 4y ago
  I boycott all podcasts that are exclusive to Spotify because I want to do my part in at least slowing down the eventual podcast walled garden future.
  - ryukafalz 4y ago
    I also boycott them for a more practical reason: I can’t listen to them in my normal podcatchers! I’d have to switch all my podcast listening to Spotify to change that, and that’s a pain.
- adamrezich 4y ago
  Spotify is in fact intending to move away from RSS, as a means of creating a walled garden: https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/08/spotify-hypes-the-revenue-potential-of-podcasts-and-audiobooks-at-its-second-investor-day-event/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/08/spotify-hypes-the-revenue-... > […] The company spent a good portion of its presentation specifically focused on podcasts, which it said had been “largely unchanged” for years before its entry into the market, due to the limitations of RSS. > Spotify cited how unbundling podcasts from RSS technology has paved the way for Spotify to generate revenue through these popular audio programs — a sentiment that’s not universally beloved by those who support an open podcast ecosystem. Spotify has disrupted that market by bringing some podcasts in-house, where they can only be heard on its service, and competitors have followed. This has fractured the ecosystem and left consumers at a disadvantage as some shows are no longer broadly available. > “We’ve been able to replace RSS for on-platform distribution, which means that podcasts created on our platform are no longer held back by this outdated technology,” Maya Prohovnik, Spotify’s head of Talk, told investors.
  - CharlesW 4y ago
    Spotify has never used RSS, other than for Roach Motel-style ingest. The plan was to embrace, extend, and extinguish the podcasting medium, and the hard part of that is done. "Podcasting" was a standards-based, open medium. Now it's any audio show, and we've lost the unique name for the open medium. As Spotify incentivizes more and more creators to not publish an RSS feed, standards-based podcasting will become a fond memory.
  - cxr 4y ago
    The entire framing of this (esp. re "unbundling") is pretty gross. Unbundling is associated with disintermediation. What Spotify is doing is the opposite. What organizational dysfunction led to the circumstances here—where the writers and editors of the linked article uncritically publish and more or less legitimize this kind of shameless corporate spin?
    - jrochkind1 4y ago
      > What organizational dysfunction The whole article is pretty much just re-wording Spotify's press release. There seem to be no sources in it except for Spotify's press release. So, a very old form of organizational disfunction in journalism: The cheapest and quickest way to write an article is to use someone's press release as the only source, as it doesn't actually require, well, any journalism.
- jrochkind1 4y ago
  Spotify has started and rapidly escalated a program to pay podcast producers for spotify-only podcasts. (with no rss feeds). Several podcasts I used to listen to and enjoy have become spotify-only. When I recently asked friends for podcast suggestions... several were spotify-only, i don't think the suggestors even realized it, cause they just listened on spotify anyway regardless. So I think Spotify agrees with you and is working on it...
jhot 4y ago
Same. After Google Reader I went with Feedly for a while, then self-hosted TTRSS, and currently self-hosted Miniflux. Miniflutt is my preferred Android client and ReadKit on Mac. The Miniflux web app is nice and simple but I prefer clients that mark as read on scroll. I occasionally venture onto Reddit or HN to see if I've missed anything big but rarely do.
- soco 4y ago
  I use HN's RSS feed (plus a few others) with a Firefox extension (Feedbro) and that's all I need.
pavel_lishin 4y ago
It's not dead, but many things I wish supported RSS don't. Facebook. Twitter. Instagram. These would be incredibly useful things to have native RSS feeds for, but instead I have to dig around and either use some tool someone built for the purpose - a tool at the mercy of the walled garden whose wall they're peeking over - or build my own nightmare factory.
- throw0101a 4y ago
  > Twitter It used to; killed off ~2013: * https://brodiesnotes.blogspot.com/2013/06/twitter-has-killed-off-rss-feeds-thats.html https://brodiesnotes.blogspot.com/2013/06/twitter-has-killed...
- baskethead 4y ago
  None of those will because they rely on engagement to make money. They need people logging into their servers so that they can see what they are looking at. That's not how RSS works, so of course they won't support it.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    They rely on ads to make money. Twitter could add ads to their RSS feeds, just as they add ads to their app feeds.
  - FernandoMax 4y ago
    And I think this is the main reason Google Killed Google Reader. It was controversial (or illegal or ugly) to put ads over the third party content. And it was way better to have Adsense on the websites directly. Such "spring cleaning" was an alibi, not the reason. It was abandoned after some attempts to build a kind of social network inside, and probably they preferred people to create content on +1 instead of on blogs. But Blogger still exists, and there's a strong contradiction why to kill the reader for the blogs except one: Ads. Google Reader was bad for Ad business. And that's a big business in Google. And terribly sad.
  - asdff 4y ago
    Some places that do offer rss only offer truncated feeds so you actually have to open the website and be monetized and fingerprinted. there are of course workarounds but its an arms race with only a few maintainers.
seltzered_ 4y ago
One thing that's been corrosive to rss the past couple years have been podcast platforms. I find more podcasts (free ones) that can only be accessed through platforms like Google podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or Anchor, with no rss feed link to use in a platform agnostic podcatcher app.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  My policy is to just ignore these. There's so much content out there it's not hard to find other (proper) podcasts to listen to.
  - seltzered_ 4y ago
    Disagree on 'blaming the creator' argument. Not everyone is aware of these technical philosophies and are focused on getting a good story out there. Feel the same way about social media.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  Unfortunately, to Spotify's great delight, the word "podcast" has been successfully embraced, extended, and extinguished. Us technical types have been complicit in it by allowing the word "podcast" to mean audio shows on proprietary platforms that require proprietary players.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    The word never made much sense though. A "podcast" is a file that you download from the internet. What's the point of calling it a podcast?
    - jethro_tell 4y ago
      And yet here we are clicking a floppy disk icon to save it. Language and meaning change over time. That's OK.
      - 4y ago
iroddis 4y ago
+1 for Feedly, although I use Feedly Classic on IOS for a more concise, no-frills UI. I really appreciate the header + summary without thumbnails format for quickly going through large-volume sources (like HN).
AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
I dropped Feedly because I found that 90%+ of my feeds would only put the article title and the first sentence into the feed, then require I click the URL to pull up the full article. It wasn't very fun constantly having to switch between my RSS app and my browser, so I just stopped using it.
- distrill 4y ago
  Yeah this really sucks. I think some do this for paywall reasons, but there are definitely models out there to allow in-reader paywall access. Stratechery has an interesting approach - when you subscribe you get a unique feed that can be cancelled when you stop paying.
- babelfish 4y ago
  This is an issue with the site's RSS feed, not Feedly. Feedly has an option to open any individual feeds posts in an in-app browser directly (and if you're on iOS, even enable Reader mode!) to combat this, so you don't need to switch apps!
  - pepjo26 4y ago
    I use Reeder for iOS + Feedly. What the OP describes started happening to me with all sites at the same time 2 days ago. Interestingly, it does not happen on the main Feedly site. So I do think that Feedly is making the experience worse with third party readers. I would speculate that this is done because third party readers don’t show ads.
- pinkano 4y ago
  We let publishers decide whether to showcase their content via a full feed (ie. full text and multimedia content can be read through a reader app) or a partial feed (ie. only showing limited text, inviting readers to browse full-content directly on their website). The choice is entirely in their hands. Some publishers offer full RSS feeds as one of the benefits of their subscriptions. It might be something to explore for your favorite must-read sources.
- ove_halseth 4y ago
yokoprime 4y ago
NetNewsWire has been my goto last couple of years. It's fantastic, and you cannot beat the price (free and open source)

Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago

Same. It was a major loss when Google killed Reader, but I just found another app and kept on RSSing. NewsBlurr is my current choice (windows).

tootie 4y ago

RSS is still the default distribution system for podcasts. It's probably the thin thread that is keeping Spotify from building a walled garden for audio.

marcrosoft 4y ago
I boycott all podcasts that are exclusive to Spotify because I want to do my part in at least slowing down the eventual podcast walled garden future.
- ryukafalz 4y ago
  I also boycott them for a more practical reason: I can’t listen to them in my normal podcatchers! I’d have to switch all my podcast listening to Spotify to change that, and that’s a pain.
adamrezich 4y ago
Spotify is in fact intending to move away from RSS, as a means of creating a walled garden: https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/08/spotify-hypes-the-revenue-potential-of-podcasts-and-audiobooks-at-its-second-investor-day-event/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/08/spotify-hypes-the-revenue-... > […] The company spent a good portion of its presentation specifically focused on podcasts, which it said had been “largely unchanged” for years before its entry into the market, due to the limitations of RSS. > Spotify cited how unbundling podcasts from RSS technology has paved the way for Spotify to generate revenue through these popular audio programs — a sentiment that’s not universally beloved by those who support an open podcast ecosystem. Spotify has disrupted that market by bringing some podcasts in-house, where they can only be heard on its service, and competitors have followed. This has fractured the ecosystem and left consumers at a disadvantage as some shows are no longer broadly available. > “We’ve been able to replace RSS for on-platform distribution, which means that podcasts created on our platform are no longer held back by this outdated technology,” Maya Prohovnik, Spotify’s head of Talk, told investors.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  Spotify has never used RSS, other than for Roach Motel-style ingest. The plan was to embrace, extend, and extinguish the podcasting medium, and the hard part of that is done. "Podcasting" was a standards-based, open medium. Now it's any audio show, and we've lost the unique name for the open medium. As Spotify incentivizes more and more creators to not publish an RSS feed, standards-based podcasting will become a fond memory.
- cxr 4y ago
  The entire framing of this (esp. re "unbundling") is pretty gross. Unbundling is associated with disintermediation. What Spotify is doing is the opposite. What organizational dysfunction led to the circumstances here—where the writers and editors of the linked article uncritically publish and more or less legitimize this kind of shameless corporate spin?
  - jrochkind1 4y ago
    > What organizational dysfunction The whole article is pretty much just re-wording Spotify's press release. There seem to be no sources in it except for Spotify's press release. So, a very old form of organizational disfunction in journalism: The cheapest and quickest way to write an article is to use someone's press release as the only source, as it doesn't actually require, well, any journalism.
jrochkind1 4y ago
Spotify has started and rapidly escalated a program to pay podcast producers for spotify-only podcasts. (with no rss feeds). Several podcasts I used to listen to and enjoy have become spotify-only. When I recently asked friends for podcast suggestions... several were spotify-only, i don't think the suggestors even realized it, cause they just listened on spotify anyway regardless. So I think Spotify agrees with you and is working on it...

jhot 4y ago

Same. After Google Reader I went with Feedly for a while, then self-hosted TTRSS, and currently self-hosted Miniflux. Miniflutt is my preferred Android client and ReadKit on Mac. The Miniflux web app is nice and simple but I prefer clients that mark as read on scroll. I occasionally venture onto Reddit or HN to see if I've missed anything big but rarely do.

soco 4y ago
I use HN's RSS feed (plus a few others) with a Firefox extension (Feedbro) and that's all I need.

pavel_lishin 4y ago

It's not dead, but many things I wish supported RSS don't. Facebook. Twitter. Instagram. These would be incredibly useful things to have native RSS feeds for, but instead I have to dig around and either use some tool someone built for the purpose - a tool at the mercy of the walled garden whose wall they're peeking over - or build my own nightmare factory.

throw0101a 4y ago
> Twitter It used to; killed off ~2013: * https://brodiesnotes.blogspot.com/2013/06/twitter-has-killed-off-rss-feeds-thats.html https://brodiesnotes.blogspot.com/2013/06/twitter-has-killed...
baskethead 4y ago
None of those will because they rely on engagement to make money. They need people logging into their servers so that they can see what they are looking at. That's not how RSS works, so of course they won't support it.
- lapcat 4y ago
  They rely on ads to make money. Twitter could add ads to their RSS feeds, just as they add ads to their app feeds.
- FernandoMax 4y ago
  And I think this is the main reason Google Killed Google Reader. It was controversial (or illegal or ugly) to put ads over the third party content. And it was way better to have Adsense on the websites directly. Such "spring cleaning" was an alibi, not the reason. It was abandoned after some attempts to build a kind of social network inside, and probably they preferred people to create content on +1 instead of on blogs. But Blogger still exists, and there's a strong contradiction why to kill the reader for the blogs except one: Ads. Google Reader was bad for Ad business. And that's a big business in Google. And terribly sad.
- asdff 4y ago
  Some places that do offer rss only offer truncated feeds so you actually have to open the website and be monetized and fingerprinted. there are of course workarounds but its an arms race with only a few maintainers.

seltzered_ 4y ago

One thing that's been corrosive to rss the past couple years have been podcast platforms. I find more podcasts (free ones) that can only be accessed through platforms like Google podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or Anchor, with no rss feed link to use in a platform agnostic podcatcher app.

AlexandrB 4y ago
My policy is to just ignore these. There's so much content out there it's not hard to find other (proper) podcasts to listen to.
- seltzered_ 4y ago
  Disagree on 'blaming the creator' argument. Not everyone is aware of these technical philosophies and are focused on getting a good story out there. Feel the same way about social media.
CharlesW 4y ago
Unfortunately, to Spotify's great delight, the word "podcast" has been successfully embraced, extended, and extinguished. Us technical types have been complicit in it by allowing the word "podcast" to mean audio shows on proprietary platforms that require proprietary players.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  The word never made much sense though. A "podcast" is a file that you download from the internet. What's the point of calling it a podcast?
  - jethro_tell 4y ago
    And yet here we are clicking a floppy disk icon to save it. Language and meaning change over time. That's OK.
    - 4y ago

iroddis 4y ago

+1 for Feedly, although I use Feedly Classic on IOS for a more concise, no-frills UI. I really appreciate the header + summary without thumbnails format for quickly going through large-volume sources (like HN).

AdmiralAsshat 4y ago

I dropped Feedly because I found that 90%+ of my feeds would only put the article title and the first sentence into the feed, then require I click the URL to pull up the full article. It wasn't very fun constantly having to switch between my RSS app and my browser, so I just stopped using it.

distrill 4y ago
Yeah this really sucks. I think some do this for paywall reasons, but there are definitely models out there to allow in-reader paywall access. Stratechery has an interesting approach - when you subscribe you get a unique feed that can be cancelled when you stop paying.
babelfish 4y ago
This is an issue with the site's RSS feed, not Feedly. Feedly has an option to open any individual feeds posts in an in-app browser directly (and if you're on iOS, even enable Reader mode!) to combat this, so you don't need to switch apps!
- pepjo26 4y ago
  I use Reeder for iOS + Feedly. What the OP describes started happening to me with all sites at the same time 2 days ago. Interestingly, it does not happen on the main Feedly site. So I do think that Feedly is making the experience worse with third party readers. I would speculate that this is done because third party readers don’t show ads.
pinkano 4y ago
We let publishers decide whether to showcase their content via a full feed (ie. full text and multimedia content can be read through a reader app) or a partial feed (ie. only showing limited text, inviting readers to browse full-content directly on their website). The choice is entirely in their hands. Some publishers offer full RSS feeds as one of the benefits of their subscriptions. It might be something to explore for your favorite must-read sources.
ove_halseth 4y ago

yokoprime 4y ago

NetNewsWire has been my goto last couple of years. It's fantastic, and you cannot beat the price (free and open source)