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> Other people’s websites are the OG social network, and the optimist in me is going to riff on MLK’s quote: the social arc of the internet is long, but it bend

> Other people’s websites are the OG social network, and the optimist in me is going to riff on MLK’s quote: the social arc of the internet is long, but it bends towards individual websites. I agree with the first part, individual websites are the OG social network. The second, though, that the "social" web will lean towards individual websites seems dubious. The more "individuality" a given medium enables, the more complexity and therefore, difficulty. Most people want to just share photos and lulz with their friends, and the the landscape of social walled gardens are all trying to tap this demand.

Etheryte 4y ago
I would say yes and no. For technical and semi-technical people, most personal sites and the like offer RSS which is universal enough that everyone can consume it their own way. For non-technical people however I agree that this doesn't work out.
- mawise 4y ago
  There are things we can do to make RSS-based consumption much easier. I use an RSS browser plugin for Firefox[1] so that a feed icon shows up on any page advertising[2] a feed. The feed icon let's me subscribe to the site with 2 clicks (and no copy/paste). This is a space that is ripe for building better tools, especially since so much of the (non-walled) internet still exposes RSS. We even have a handful of companies getting people to pay $$ for a solid hosted feed-reader experience (Feedly, Inoreader, Newsblur, etc.) [1]: https://github.com/Reeywhaar/want-my-rss https://github.com/Reeywhaar/want-my-rss [2]: https://www.rssboard.org/rss-autodiscovery https://www.rssboard.org/rss-autodiscovery
  - klez 4y ago
    > I use an RSS browser plugin for Firefox so that a feed icon shows up on any page advertising a feed. Can you imagine Firefox having such a button without the need for a plugin. That would be crazy, wouldn't it?
    - jacooper 4y ago
      Nah they are spending time making the tabs larger, that's more important.
    - rchaud 4y ago
      Pretty sure I remember Firefox 2 having an orange RSS button built in. This would have been 2006 though, the golden age of blogging. I can understand if they removed it, most high-traffic personal blogs started moving to social media by around 2010-12.

Etheryte 4y ago

I would say yes and no. For technical and semi-technical people, most personal sites and the like offer RSS which is universal enough that everyone can consume it their own way. For non-technical people however I agree that this doesn't work out.

mawise 4y ago
There are things we can do to make RSS-based consumption much easier. I use an RSS browser plugin for Firefox[1] so that a feed icon shows up on any page advertising[2] a feed. The feed icon let's me subscribe to the site with 2 clicks (and no copy/paste). This is a space that is ripe for building better tools, especially since so much of the (non-walled) internet still exposes RSS. We even have a handful of companies getting people to pay $$ for a solid hosted feed-reader experience (Feedly, Inoreader, Newsblur, etc.) [1]: https://github.com/Reeywhaar/want-my-rss https://github.com/Reeywhaar/want-my-rss [2]: https://www.rssboard.org/rss-autodiscovery https://www.rssboard.org/rss-autodiscovery
- klez 4y ago
  > I use an RSS browser plugin for Firefox so that a feed icon shows up on any page advertising a feed. Can you imagine Firefox having such a button without the need for a plugin. That would be crazy, wouldn't it?
  - jacooper 4y ago
    Nah they are spending time making the tabs larger, that's more important.
  - rchaud 4y ago
    Pretty sure I remember Firefox 2 having an orange RSS button built in. This would have been 2006 though, the golden age of blogging. I can understand if they removed it, most high-traffic personal blogs started moving to social media by around 2010-12.