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Can someone please explain to me why RSS still exists?

3 points by jcbator ↗ HN
I don't think an RSS reader (for news, blogs, or podcasts) has ever provided the best experience for its medium. Isn't it time we moved on? Maybe I'm just bitter after dealing with it for Fireside, but still... there has to be a better way. Thoughts?

5 comments

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detaro
I couldn't name anything that provides a better experience and is open enough, even though I'm also not perfectly happy with the reader clients and the hiccups when people fiddle with their blogs.

You say you don't like it: What specifically don't you like about RSS/Atom?

jcbator
I think the core of it is exactly that - the hiccups and lack of standardization. (This reminds me of the classic tightly-knit Apple vs. open Android argument). Looking at podcasts for example, they are presented in a standardized format on whichever podcast app you use, but the data and enclosures behind that interface are inconsistent. It leads to some episodes downloading quickly, others failing entirely, and all kinds of error checking/validation if you want to provide a slick experience. Maybe text content is better?
detaro
Text has similar issues, most common things I notice are:

* blog software dropping JS-dependent elements into the feed

* leaving out formatting (e.g. leaving line breaks)

* software updates etc triggering entries to be republished

All of these are IMHO "faults" in the publishing software.

A clearer standard for what you actually put into a feed (formatting) and potentially permissions for caching of e.g. podcast episodes would be helpful, if it were actually enforced (e.g. by clients being strict and dropping non-conforming contents). There clearly is potential for improvement, but I haven't seen any strong candidates that could do better, + they'll have a hard time gaining momentum vs the "good enough" right now.

(P.S.: if someone disagrees and has a good suggestion for something better, please tell us and don't just downvote)

Nadya
Let's say I read CSS Tricks. However, I don't give a crap about any articles written about Wordpress or PHP because I do not deal with Wordpress or PHP.

Using an RSS Reader I can filter out wordpress articles and only get alerted of new blogs that I'm interested in. This also means I don't need to check CSS Tricks daily to see if anything new has been posted, as my RSS Reader will alert me when anything is posted.

I use RSS as a "partial subscribe". Something I wish I could do on other services (e.g Youtube, subscribing only to a specific playlist)

webgurl83
RSS still exists because Twitter and Facebook aren't open standards. I suppose neither are most RSS readers, but most of them will let you take your feeds with you if you don't like them. It also makes for better archiving than Twitter and Facebook, and I can have a lot of feeds in a central place, (without having to go visit a whole bunch of sites to catch up on what they're posting.)