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> Massive tech companies tried to own syndication. They failed. Well, RSS won the battle, but lost the war.

kevincox 1y ago
Depends how you define lost. I still use it every day. Is it a popular main stream thing? No. Does every since site offer feeds for every reasonable thing you could want to subscribe to? But does it still work quite well for those that want to use it? Yes.
piskov 1y ago
Yet I still use it on all devices and nothing beats it. Moved to Feedly when Google Reader died. For apple ecosystem best client is https://reederapp.com/classic/ https://reederapp.com/classic/
- frou_dh 1y ago
  Arguably the best is NetNewsWire, which has been around in various forms for over 20 years and is still developed today https://netnewswire.com https://netnewswire.com
  - michaelcampbell 1y ago
    https://theoldreader.com https://theoldreader.com has been my go-to since google reader was killed. It's pretty good at sussing out the rss feed of random blogs if one exists, too.
  - latexr 1y ago
    NetNewsWire doesn’t have an in-app browser, which can be a dealbreaker (it was for me, last I tried it).
  - hckalewine 1y ago
    Cannot agree more.
- riedel 1y ago
  I use RSS inside Telegram using a bot (should work with Matrix, Teams, etc as well) Allows syncing read stuff across devices and gives nice previews.
- ericd 1y ago
  Sorry for the random question, but I’ve been trying to get more into RSS, and figure it’s worth asking someone who has a lot of experience - is there a reliable way to find an RSS feed for a given site, assuming it has one? Or is it a set of heuristics you try? Are there good tools to RSSify sites that don’t have one?
  - Latitude7973 1y ago
    I use Folo which has Rsshub built in. You simply search for a source you want, or add your own with a known URL for everyone to use. Otherwise you can use Rsshub with a reader of your choice.
  - NicuCalcea 1y ago
    I use RSSHub Radar which finds both native feeds and some RSS-ified feeds for websites that don't support it. https://github.com/DIYgod/RSSHub-Radar https://github.com/DIYgod/RSSHub-Radar
    - ericd 1y ago
      Ah this is great, thanks!
  - frou_dh 1y ago
    With decent RSS apps, you can generally just paste in the URL of any page (or the site's homepage) and they will take care of examining the HTML to find the URL of the actual feed.
  - AndrewDucker 1y ago
    Check the source code. Looks for "rss". If that returns too many hits then search for "application/rss+xml".
    - rpdillon 1y ago
      Exactly the approach that I've been using for years. Manual, but works!
    - 1y ago
rambambram 1y ago
What "war"? RSS is an open standard and still going strong. It doesn't need to win or compete or whatever business words from warfare are hyped nowadays. It just needs to exist. The genie is already out of the bottle, for 20+ years.
linhns 1y ago
It’s still alive and making strong steps towards a comeback in recent years.
Gormo 1y ago
Lost it to who or what? What other feed syndication protocols are in widespread use? RSS is everywhere, and I don't see anything else comparable.
- immibis 1y ago
  Discord. Reddit. Hacker News. WhatsApp. iMessage. Ex-Twitter. Instagram.
  - Gormo 1y ago
    Reddit and HN fully support RSS. Discord, WhatsApp, and iMessage are all messaging applications that aren't directly related to the use case for RSS. That leaves Twitter and Instagram as the two major sites for which RSS would be applicable, but which don't natively offer RSS feeds. And a cursory web search reveals the large number of solutions people have come up with for subscribing to content from Twitter and Instagram via RSS, indicating that there's significant demand for it. It's also worth noting that with Twitter in decline, the main competitors gaining traction, BlueSky and Mastodon, do both natively offer RSS feeds. On top of that, the entire podcasting ecosystem is fundamentally based on RSS, and it's still the primary mechanism for syndicating blog content. So RSS is not just alive and well, it's thriving.

Depends how you define lost. I still use it every day. Is it a popular main stream thing? No. Does every since site offer feeds for every reasonable thing you could want to subscribe to? But does it still work quite well for those that want to use it? Yes.

piskov 1y ago

Yet I still use it on all devices and nothing beats it. Moved to Feedly when Google Reader died. For apple ecosystem best client is https://reederapp.com/classic/ https://reederapp.com/classic/

frou_dh 1y ago
Arguably the best is NetNewsWire, which has been around in various forms for over 20 years and is still developed today https://netnewswire.com https://netnewswire.com
- michaelcampbell 1y ago
  https://theoldreader.com https://theoldreader.com has been my go-to since google reader was killed. It's pretty good at sussing out the rss feed of random blogs if one exists, too.
- latexr 1y ago
  NetNewsWire doesn’t have an in-app browser, which can be a dealbreaker (it was for me, last I tried it).
- hckalewine 1y ago
  Cannot agree more.
riedel 1y ago
I use RSS inside Telegram using a bot (should work with Matrix, Teams, etc as well) Allows syncing read stuff across devices and gives nice previews.
ericd 1y ago
Sorry for the random question, but I’ve been trying to get more into RSS, and figure it’s worth asking someone who has a lot of experience - is there a reliable way to find an RSS feed for a given site, assuming it has one? Or is it a set of heuristics you try? Are there good tools to RSSify sites that don’t have one?
- Latitude7973 1y ago
  I use Folo which has Rsshub built in. You simply search for a source you want, or add your own with a known URL for everyone to use. Otherwise you can use Rsshub with a reader of your choice.
- NicuCalcea 1y ago
  I use RSSHub Radar which finds both native feeds and some RSS-ified feeds for websites that don't support it. https://github.com/DIYgod/RSSHub-Radar https://github.com/DIYgod/RSSHub-Radar
  - ericd 1y ago
    Ah this is great, thanks!
- frou_dh 1y ago
  With decent RSS apps, you can generally just paste in the URL of any page (or the site's homepage) and they will take care of examining the HTML to find the URL of the actual feed.
- AndrewDucker 1y ago
  Check the source code. Looks for "rss". If that returns too many hits then search for "application/rss+xml".
  - rpdillon 1y ago
    Exactly the approach that I've been using for years. Manual, but works!
  - 1y ago

rambambram 1y ago

What "war"? RSS is an open standard and still going strong. It doesn't need to win or compete or whatever business words from warfare are hyped nowadays. It just needs to exist. The genie is already out of the bottle, for 20+ years.

linhns 1y ago

It’s still alive and making strong steps towards a comeback in recent years.

Gormo 1y ago

Lost it to who or what? What other feed syndication protocols are in widespread use? RSS is everywhere, and I don't see anything else comparable.

immibis 1y ago
Discord. Reddit. Hacker News. WhatsApp. iMessage. Ex-Twitter. Instagram.
- Gormo 1y ago
  Reddit and HN fully support RSS. Discord, WhatsApp, and iMessage are all messaging applications that aren't directly related to the use case for RSS. That leaves Twitter and Instagram as the two major sites for which RSS would be applicable, but which don't natively offer RSS feeds. And a cursory web search reveals the large number of solutions people have come up with for subscribing to content from Twitter and Instagram via RSS, indicating that there's significant demand for it. It's also worth noting that with Twitter in decline, the main competitors gaining traction, BlueSky and Mastodon, do both natively offer RSS feeds. On top of that, the entire podcasting ecosystem is fundamentally based on RSS, and it's still the primary mechanism for syndicating blog content. So RSS is not just alive and well, it's thriving.