4 ms·

People have said repeatedly that RSS is dead, and that's apparently true, but I've been wondering for a few years now what has replaced it? It's not like social

by Udo 14y ago

People have said repeatedly that RSS is dead, and that's apparently true, but I've been wondering for a few years now what has replaced it? It's not like social networks provide the same kind of service, really. So is getting updates from people and projects you care about really such a niche thing? Have I missed some other huge channel that supersedes RSS? Or are we about to actually lose something profound here? Kudos to Newsblur, which I never heard of before today. I'd like to sign up for a paying membership, but it seems like this is exactly what everyone else is doing, so servers are dead...

sixQuarks 14y ago
I feel exactly the same way: what the hell is replacing RSS feeds? I hate keeping up with "live" feeds like twitter.
doidydoidy 14y ago
Protip: when people like that say "RSS is dead", what they mean is "unfashionable".
- Udo 14y ago
  I thought that was self-evident. Unfashionable is the first step in a trend that ends with "dead and abandoned". As an aside: I implore you not to say things like "protip" here. It comes off as immature and condescending if not outright hostile. I realize it's a quick and snappy way to get upvotes from like-minded users but it's really that kind of phrase which prompts people to complain about redditization or 4chanization when they refer to the declining post quality of HN.
takluyver 14y ago
As someone who used to use RSS feeds and doesn't any more, I've replaced it with a mixture of: checking websites for stuff that updates frequently like news, e-mail subscriptions for infrequent but important updates, and twitter (or similar) subscriptions for stuff that I can afford to miss. Why not RSS? Formatting was often not quite right - if I wanted to read something, I often ended up clicking through to the original site anyway. And I didn't like the e-mail style expectation that I would read everything, or at least mark it as read (which felt like admitting defeat). It just began to feel like a chore. When I log in to twitter, it doesn't tell me that I have 1439 unread tweets.
- tempestn 14y ago
  For the first issue, you might check out newsblur. Basically solves the clicking through to the original issue perfectly. The second I completely agree with you on. Even these cool readers that prioritize stuff you're most likely to read, by necessity, keep track of what's read and unread, and I get exactly that same itch that I need to stay on top of everything. It's completely artificial and almost ridiculous, but there it is. And I can't imagine how a reader could solve that problem without creating the even worse worry of missing things. (Which ironically evaporates when you don't use a reader and therefore no longer expect not to miss anything.) Perhaps there is a novel solution there though, waiting to be discovered.
  - takluyver 14y ago
    I think in many ways the solution was already discovered: don't create the expectation that the user will read everything. When they log on, show them the most recent or most significant events, and provide a way to find older events if they want. Twitter, Facebook, plenty of news sites, aggregators like HN & reddit, all hit on more or less this. Technically, there's no reason it couldn't be done with RSS feeds. But the language of 'subscribing' encouraged thinking about RSS feeds in a different way.
    - mkr-hn 14y ago
      This is what happens in Feedly's "Today" view. It (apparently) uses signals from social media to pick out the most popular articles in your folders and only shows those.
bshanks 14y ago
> So is getting updates from people and projects you care about really such a niche thing? My guess is that it is. Anecdotally, I would guess that only my programmer or tech industry friends and me seriously care about getting updates from projects, or from people they don't know socially IRL. I would guess that my non-programmer friends want social updates from people, which social networks do provide, and they are somewhat interested in what the rest of the world is talking about, but just as a form of entertainment, so there's no need to group all the updates together because it's just as fun to check each individual site every now and then. I guess there is a crowd of political news buffs too, people who would want comprehensive coverage of various takes on various recent events, but I don't know any personally (who aren't also programmers). If you don't care about multiple points of view then reading one or two newspapers or magazines is sufficient and there's no need for a feed reader. There's also journalists and PR people whose job involves keeping up with zillions of updates. And podcasting. So, my guess is, yes, it's just a niche: programmers, a small subset of news buffs, media professionals, and podcasting. Looking at the bright side, it doesn't matter to me if most websites drop RSS as long as the ones most relevant to my niche continue to use it; so if RSS becomes forgotten about by most people but is still used by websites that target programmers and by news websites, that's enough for me.
- 1ManBandAccts 14y ago
  From the people I know who aren't in the tech industry who used reader intensively: a writer (for research), community website business owner (for providing content and keeping up), marketing business owner (for keeping track of industry developments). I used it throughout the day and run all my CPD and almost all my non social media based marketing through it. Currently looking at Feedly and I have 6 posts in my Saved in 1 screen shot instead of 17 with Reader. Working my way through the alternatives and on hour 8 so far. Grrrr. It isn't niche in the same way as GMail isn't, or Apps.

by Udo 14y ago

sixQuarks 14y ago

I feel exactly the same way: what the hell is replacing RSS feeds? I hate keeping up with "live" feeds like twitter.

doidydoidy 14y ago

Protip: when people like that say "RSS is dead", what they mean is "unfashionable".

Udo 14y ago
I thought that was self-evident. Unfashionable is the first step in a trend that ends with "dead and abandoned". As an aside: I implore you not to say things like "protip" here. It comes off as immature and condescending if not outright hostile. I realize it's a quick and snappy way to get upvotes from like-minded users but it's really that kind of phrase which prompts people to complain about redditization or 4chanization when they refer to the declining post quality of HN.

takluyver 14y ago

As someone who used to use RSS feeds and doesn't any more, I've replaced it with a mixture of: checking websites for stuff that updates frequently like news, e-mail subscriptions for infrequent but important updates, and twitter (or similar) subscriptions for stuff that I can afford to miss. Why not RSS? Formatting was often not quite right - if I wanted to read something, I often ended up clicking through to the original site anyway. And I didn't like the e-mail style expectation that I would read everything, or at least mark it as read (which felt like admitting defeat). It just began to feel like a chore. When I log in to twitter, it doesn't tell me that I have 1439 unread tweets.

tempestn 14y ago
For the first issue, you might check out newsblur. Basically solves the clicking through to the original issue perfectly. The second I completely agree with you on. Even these cool readers that prioritize stuff you're most likely to read, by necessity, keep track of what's read and unread, and I get exactly that same itch that I need to stay on top of everything. It's completely artificial and almost ridiculous, but there it is. And I can't imagine how a reader could solve that problem without creating the even worse worry of missing things. (Which ironically evaporates when you don't use a reader and therefore no longer expect not to miss anything.) Perhaps there is a novel solution there though, waiting to be discovered.
- takluyver 14y ago
  I think in many ways the solution was already discovered: don't create the expectation that the user will read everything. When they log on, show them the most recent or most significant events, and provide a way to find older events if they want. Twitter, Facebook, plenty of news sites, aggregators like HN & reddit, all hit on more or less this. Technically, there's no reason it couldn't be done with RSS feeds. But the language of 'subscribing' encouraged thinking about RSS feeds in a different way.
  - mkr-hn 14y ago
    This is what happens in Feedly's "Today" view. It (apparently) uses signals from social media to pick out the most popular articles in your folders and only shows those.

bshanks 14y ago

> So is getting updates from people and projects you care about really such a niche thing? My guess is that it is. Anecdotally, I would guess that only my programmer or tech industry friends and me seriously care about getting updates from projects, or from people they don't know socially IRL. I would guess that my non-programmer friends want social updates from people, which social networks do provide, and they are somewhat interested in what the rest of the world is talking about, but just as a form of entertainment, so there's no need to group all the updates together because it's just as fun to check each individual site every now and then. I guess there is a crowd of political news buffs too, people who would want comprehensive coverage of various takes on various recent events, but I don't know any personally (who aren't also programmers). If you don't care about multiple points of view then reading one or two newspapers or magazines is sufficient and there's no need for a feed reader. There's also journalists and PR people whose job involves keeping up with zillions of updates. And podcasting. So, my guess is, yes, it's just a niche: programmers, a small subset of news buffs, media professionals, and podcasting. Looking at the bright side, it doesn't matter to me if most websites drop RSS as long as the ones most relevant to my niche continue to use it; so if RSS becomes forgotten about by most people but is still used by websites that target programmers and by news websites, that's enough for me.

1ManBandAccts 14y ago
From the people I know who aren't in the tech industry who used reader intensively: a writer (for research), community website business owner (for providing content and keeping up), marketing business owner (for keeping track of industry developments). I used it throughout the day and run all my CPD and almost all my non social media based marketing through it. Currently looking at Feedly and I have 6 posts in my Saved in 1 screen shot instead of 17 with Reader. Working my way through the alternatives and on hour 8 so far. Grrrr. It isn't niche in the same way as GMail isn't, or Apps.