Can someone please explain why some people don't like RSS feeds?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4182644

by ericleeclark • 14 years ago

10 12 14 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Years ago I started using RSS to consume content and stay on top of what's going on. Today I find that there are still an unbelievable amount of people who don't understand the concept of pulling in content to a place like Google Reader as opposed to individually visiting sites (I'm talking about people outside of our techie world). I mean, RSS isn't THAT complicated, right? Then I hear spats about "RSS is dying" or "RSS is a thing of the past"... Really? I think RSS is one of the best things since sliced bread. I don't think social will overtake the need for RSS, so I'm just not quite sure I understand the nay-sayers. Care to chime in?

Crunchy2• 14 years ago

I think some people just dont understand em. Or the concept of feeds. Maybe cuz Apple didn't"invent" it :p Some people are convinced that you dont get full stories or images etc, which I guess can be be true but seems rarer these days. I like to browse the headers & then if I still need to visit the site I can. Saves so much time wasting surfing each site when you consume many!

mooism2• 14 years ago

And yet some people who can't get to grips with the idea of feeds happily signup to e-mail lists that promise "an e-mail every time I post to the site". It seems odd.

Crunchy2• 14 years ago

I know!? It IS odd. Such a simple concept that gets seemingly butchered with ignorance.

bluestix• 14 years ago

I love RSS.

I like it so much I built an RSS search engine.

http://rssident.com

It's still a work in progress but I will be adding several new features soon.

For any of you that need jobs this is an easy way to find them:

http://rssident.com/mash/?t=job&e=java

http://rssident.com/mash/?t=job&e=ruby

http://rssident.com/mash/?t=job&e=php

Or by individual feed:

http://rssident.com/feeds/?t=job&e=java

Right now it's only indexing feeds I added but soon anyone will able to add whatever feeds they want.

majani• 14 years ago

People love the concept behind RSS. They just want it served in an easily digestible way, which is: social media.

fluxon• 14 years ago

I like RSS, and my usage has gradually expanded over the years. But I can see several reasons for slowed uptake: I haven't seen new coverage of RSS such as "It's fun and easy to use RSS to collect your favorite blogs and episodic media in one place" articles for years, so it's likely very much out of the non-technical public's eye. It has become a set-and-forget commodity for media consumers who do know about it (but who don't proselytize). Getting started requires a bit of tedium - finding a decent client, copy/pasting URLs, or getting a browser to properly fire up that client to subscribe. Even finding the RSS icon/link on many content websites has become annoyingly difficult. And no blogs, podcasts or vlogs even mention "Subscribe to our RSS feed" anymore, only facebook, twitter, and maybe their website URL.

(Though I see its value for text, Google Reader (web) is weak for non-text media: it's off the main Google menubar, has no auto download, and so acts merely as a hidden, online-only index to updated content. I highly value downloading for reading/playback offline (or frequent 0-bars situations).)

A chunk of RSS's potential userbase just gravitates to what they use every day: Twitter, since "feeds" work much the same, with the addition of comments and a promotion mechanism (retweet or not).

Just thinking aloud.

Toph• 14 years ago

I love RSS... But I hate the sheer volume of noise and repetitive shit that gets rehashed over and over again across numerous feeds. I subscribe to a large variety of topics too, not just startups and technical news. It happens in every group and the VOLUME of repetitive crap is annoying to deal with.

Social media, when properly set and curated, have been slightly better at filtering some of the noise (albeit there are some repetition) but then lacks the volume of good stuff that RSS goes over that is being missed.

I need a solution in between.

georgemcbay• 14 years ago

RSS would be fantastic but the vast majority of sites that still bother to offer it gimp the crap out of their RSS feeds for advertising purposes (eg. RSS feed only gives tiny snippets of the full content and a link to the site so you'll click through and they'll get advertising views), making it basically worthless.

saurik• 14 years ago

Many things would be fantastic if they didn't have a fatal flaw; for RSS, it is that the mechanism, while something no one seems willing to pay for (a la $1/month to subscribe via RSS), is designed to undermine the only monetization model content producers normally can manage.

whichdan• 14 years ago

I wonder if anyone's tried tackling an "RSS feed store" the same way app stores work? Being able to easily add and remove $1/mo subscriptions would be quite nice, especially with a $10/yr option.

Concours• 14 years ago

Disclosure: I run http://www.feedsapi.com , a service that makes RSS a must-have .

I don't think RSS is dying and I also don't think people don't like it, it's just a complex technology for the average Joe to use, so let me try to elaborate. You need an RSS reader to use RSS, a techguy can just move on download rssowl, rssbandit...etc or use google reader, the average Joe has never heard of RSS bandit, has no clue how no clue how to use RSS on a computer and needing to download a new software or signup to another service to take advantage of RSS is another entry barrier for many people, so that's actually the main problem IMHO. Of course you have many publications with a crap user experience on their RSS full of Ads and truncated feeds ( I run a service http://www.feedsapi.com that fix both issues) , butnthere are many services to fix that.

In contrast, the entry barrier for rss on smartphone is very low, users download an RSS reader and they are ready to go. I mean, flipboard, Sparse RSS Pro, Pulse, Reeder...etc, are nothing else than RSS readers and they are very popular on all platforms ( android, iOs, windowsphone....) and the average joe tend to love them as well, so I think RSS just need more time to fully reach the average Joe. Social Media is no replacement for RSS, I don't get why people tend to compare both, it feels like comparing oranges to apples.

P.S. sorry for my english, not a native speaker.

shyn3• 14 years ago

RSS doesn't get any love from companies who use it. They never advertise it.

I think it stems from the following:

1) People want full-text feeds including images, video, and audio. Companies try to get the user to come to their site so there isn't an incentive to advertise this option if you are using full-text whereas if you aren't you probably don't have as many users subscribing.

2) Sometimes you can't tell how many people are coming from a certain feed from a certain source. If you have full-page feeds and someone is using a web-based service that stores the feeds instead of querying for each user the website may never know that an article was read.

I think there needs to be a way to measure feed reach in order to increase adoption for such an awesome technology.

Can someone please explain why some people don't like RSS feeds?

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