6 ms·

I absolutely agree with this, I recently removed a bunch of news apps from my phone because I found myself using the browser to read news websites even when I h

• dan1234 14y ago
  > In general it'd be nice to see phone OS's opening up their api's to websites and not only apps. It's hard to see that happening while the OS makers are involved in a "my App Store is bigger than your App Store" war, and they'd risk losing out on that 30% cut of paid apps.
• Gormo 14y ago
  > It'd be nice if there was a standard that allowed users to subscribe to push notifications directly from websites without having to install an app. Is using a single RSS app for all content feeds not sufficient?
  • lutusp 14y ago
    > Is using a single RSS app for all content feeds not sufficient? Yes, true, but companies can't sell you RSS, it's free in the same way that a browser is free, so that's right out. The basic idea is to take what already exists and is free, and think of a way to capture it and sell it back to people.
    • Gormo 14y ago
      Well, iOS does have its "Newsstand" app, which is essentially a reader for paywalled RSS feeds. Still, the standalone apps for every publication that this thread is complaining about are free, too. I don't see paywalls being effective for anything but the most established media properties - NY Times can (sort of) get away with it, but can everyone else? If the propagation of native apps really is because of an "everyone else is doing it" mindset, there's no reason not to just use RSS instead. And all of these sites, even NY Times, already have RSS feeds of their content anyway.
      • lutusp 14y ago
        > Still, the standalone apps for every publication that this thread is complaining about are free, too. We've been discussing their effect, not their cost. If they prevent free exchange of information, then perhaps that's a meaning of "free" worth talking about.
        • Gormo 14y ago
          That might be one of the manifest effects, but it's arguable as to whether that effect is actually the primary intention of driving users away from web content and toward standalone clients. I doubt that most of the media sources that are pushing native apps are even thinking about it in these terms; most of it is probably bandwaggoning, and the originators of the phenomena probably just wanted a way of keeping their brand and content visible on the dashboard to avoid "out of site, out of mind". In all likelihood, the net effect of attempting to shovel users off the web and into native apps is probably detrimental to the bottom line.
          • lutusp 14y ago
            > but it's arguable as to whether that effect is actually the primary intention of driving users away from web content and toward standalone clients. To the degree that people use dedicated apps, it is to that same degree that they're not using browsers and open media. The motive for creating dedicated apps should seem obvious -- it turns a public forum into a series of competing private experiences, each with a loyal (or trapped) following. The classic example is Facebook -- people could have social media with a browser in a much less structured way, but people prefer Facebook, even though it is a highly structured, separate environment, one in which Mark Zuckerberg gets to decide what experience you have. Because of Facebook's success, many other companies want some version of the same structure -- a controlled version of web browsing, separate from the public kind. > In all likelihood, the net effect of attempting to shovel users off the web and into native apps is probably detrimental to the bottom line. If that were true, people would avoid it (and Facebook would fail). But it's not true, and Web metrics support the idea that a dedicated app is a more efficient way to generate profits than waiting for people to visit your public Web site. > ... to avoid "out of site, out of mind". Cute pun on "out of sight, out of mind".
• drivebyacct2 14y ago
  Server Sent Events are possibly what you're looking for. There are extensions for interfacing with low power mobile device wakeup and notification protocols as well, IIRC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server-sent_events http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server-sent_events