in Blogging, Feed Readers, Rivers of News

Is there a RSS revival going on?

Earlier this week, Taylor Lorenz, staff writer for The Atlantic on Internet culture, posted this on Twitter: (UPDATE 12/17/2018: Twitter post was deleted, here are links to Google search cache and offline copy)

Is there any good way to follow writers on a bunch of diff websites, so anytime they post a story I see a link or something in a single feed?

This resulted in a series of over 40 replies with recommendations for feed reader apps and generally using RSS. I added my own reply for rivers of news.

Next, a post from Cal Newport (saw this via Brad Enslen):

As any serious blog consumer can attest, a carefully curated blog feed, covering niches that matter to your life, can provide substantially more value than the collectivist ping-ponging of likes and memes that make up so much of social media interaction.

Wow! This from a person who acknowledges that he does not participate on social networks, but lets it slip that he uses RSS!

Case in point: I’ve never had a social media account, and yet I constantly enjoy connecting to people, and posting and monitoring information using digital networks.

Finally, Brad Enslen has a series of posts dealing with blogging, social media and RSS:

What do you think?

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  1. @AndySylvester I certainly hope so. Thank for putting this together. RSS seems to be a tech that keeps on becoming more interesting and being used in different ways. Micro.blog is a fascinating example.

  2. @AndySylvester It certainly feels as if an RSS revival is going on, though there are many who would tell you it’s been in good health all along. I’ve made a couple of attempts over the past five years to start using it again. This time it looks as if it might stick.

  3. @bradenslen you are welcome! I think your series is a good one. It amazes me that Taylor Lorenz could have made the Twitter post she did, but it makes senseif she has never used RSS.

  4. @artkavanagh when I prepared that post, I did a search on the title words, and found at least a page or two of articles on RSS in the past year. I think the revival is in people rediscovering RSS.

  5. @AndySylvester I think that’s true and I hope you’re right. My lack of commitment arose from the difficulty in funding a reader I both liked and could afford. It’s great that NetNewsWire is making a comeback.

  6. Rival or no, I rely completely on RSS to monitor what I read on the web. My biggest worry is encountering a site that I want to follow but does not provide a feed. I simply cannot see myself relying on bookmarks and hitting up each site like I used to before RSS. Social networks are not really optimized to automatically provide links to web sites when they are updated, they rely mostly on humans to provide those links.

Webmentions

  • Is there a RSS revival going on? – Andy Sylvester’s Web andysylvester.com/2018/12/08/is-…

  • Looking back over my posts, this has been my most prolific year in blogging (posted something in every month except August!). At the start of the year, I was trying to post a link a day, and managed to get into early February before dropping off. In March, I did a first-ever podcast to look at how my feed would capture the enclosure, as Pocket Casts (my phone podcast client) seemed to be having problems with picking up podcasts that were part of blogs (like Scripting News). April and May each had a link post, but June showed more activity (a Pocket Casts bug report, some links, a blog conversation with John Philpin about the micro.blog service, and getting my Technician ham radio license). July brought a return to link posts, and I began to start responding to other posts trying to use the Webmention protocol. In September, I got interested in Federated Wiki again, had a phone call with Ward Cunningham and wrote a post or two on that topic, as well as some links. October had 3 posts, but a key one was a link to an item by Seth Godin encouraging the reader to do something every day that builds an asset for you. I decided to rededicate myself to posting something daily, whether it be just a link or something more substantial. This lead to 18 posts in November and 27 posts in December! In November, I began to get more involved with users of the micro.blog service, particularly John Philpin and Ron Chester, who I met while I was using the 1999 blog tool from Dave Winer some years ago. I did a few more podcasts, and started work on a new book (listen to podcast episode 2 for more information on that!). I have also been working with Ron Chester to set up a river of news for Bob Dylan sites, and helping with setting up some WordPress blogs for Bob Dylan writing and ham radio writing. I also wrote up instructions to help others set up rivers of news for their areas of interest. The most exciting event for me in December was to see one of my posts (Is there a RSS revival going on?) appear in Stephen Downes’ OLDaily newsletter – wow!
    With this increase in posting, I am getting more and more in the habit of posting. If it is getting near the end of the day with no post, I work to at least find a link that I want to save on my blog. I have enjoyed playing with IndieWeb technologies like Webmention, and starting my “In The Car” podcast has been fun. I have even told John Philpin that I would love to be a guest on his new podcast – whoa! Finally, I have enjoyed reading and interacting with fellow bloggers on micro.blog, have had a taste of community, and I like it! I am looking forward to many great posts to come. Here’s to a great year in 2019 and a post a day!

  • In the past two weeks, I wrote a post about RSS revival. Chris Aldrich noticed that the Twitter posting by Taylor Lorenz had been deleted. I was able to retrieve most of it in Google’s search cache, so here is a link to the cache, and to an offline copy of the Twitter conversation. I have also updated my original post with these links.

  • Read Is there a RSS revival going on? by Andy Sylvester (andysylvester.com)

    Earlier this week, Taylor Lorenz, staff writer for The Atlantic on Internet culture, posted this on Twitter:
    Is there any good way to follow writers on a bunch of diff websites, so anytime they post a story I see a link or something in a single feed?
    This resulted in a series of over 40 replies with…

    Interesting that it looks like she subsequently deleted the original post….
    Syndicated copies to:

    Also on:

  • Is there a RSS revival going on?

    andysylvester.com/2018/12/08/is-…

    Gawd I hope so. Social media streams are so wonky (even this one) – Really really miss Google Reader, but getting by with @feedly.