---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.