----------------------------------------------------------------------
In praise of RSS
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Lately I've been seeing these services for "human curated
content" that you can subscribe to, and I thought to myself,
"Isn't this just someone else's RSS feed?".
I use RSS most days for various blogs and FOSS news, and it
really changed my routine. Its very convenient, I don't have to
actually visit every site, and there are no ads.
Now RSS isn't exactly dead, but I wouldn't say its "alive".
Itis in the same limbo as mailing lists and IRC, most people don't
use them, but those that do REALLY like them. This begs the
question, what relegated it to us web 1.0 weirdos?
1. Social media
For most people social media (mainly twitter and Facebook)
replaced RSS. It is fairly convenient as you can follow whatever,
and see them in one place. But you more often then not have to
follow a link to actually read anything, and there are tons of
invasive ads. Not to mention your uncle going on long rants,
combined with toxic drama.
2. Lack of support
Most mainstream browsers removed RSS support some time ago.
This means that you have to know about it beforehand, and
install new software just for RSS. For the tech literate this
is no issue, but the general user is more likely to use the
comparatively easy social media site.
3. lack of ads
For us this is a positive, but since the industry has
fallen in love with invasive ads that track you.... Well they
aren't going to call much attention to something that removes ads
and returns their bloated site to basic text and image.
All that being said I don't think its necessarily bad that
RSS ended up like this. besides actual news sites and a few store
fronts, sites with a RSS feed tend to be fairly non-commercial. the
result being that my aggregator feels like an HTTP-net version of
Gopher. If every site had a feed I can't help but feel it would be
ruined. That little orange icon on a blog says "Hey I'm a tech savvy
person who loves whatever it is I'm writing about", and I'd like it
to stay that way.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Speaking of aggregators, my phlogs is now on Bongusta! I'm flattered
by whomever suggested me.
