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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-

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.

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.