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Return of RSS Feeds

2 points by rbc ↗ HN
This brief missive regards a response to the impact of AI on Internet publishers. As search engines move toward providing AI summaries as part of their search results, where does that leave Internet publishers who never get the click?

The proposal is to promote RSS feeds as an alternative to search engine optimization, or social media sharing. Once a return user has added a feed to their feed reader, the publisher and the user have a direct link that won't be subject to the whims of search and social media algorithms.

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tjansen
I have also thought about things like that. I'm currently working on a mainstream-focused RSS reader that comes with a large feed catalog and a feed-spider mechanism: when a site like Hacker News posts a link to a yet-unknown site, it automatically searches the website for an RSS feed, and if it finds one, it automatically adds it.

While my main project is the RSS reader itself, I think the ever-growing feed catalog is something that would be interesting as a stand-alone project: a reader-neutral catalog of RSS feeds.

An interesting observation is how people are currently discovering podcasts vs how they discover news feeds. Most podcasts are found on podcast directories, usually embedded in the platform. While discovering an RSS feed usually is more like i-found-an-interesting-site-does-it-have-an-rss-feed, which works ok for enthusiasts, but is far too complicated for mainstream users.

From a publisher's perspective, the main issue with RSS feeds is that if they contain the full text instead of a summary, they are currently hard to monetize. And a summary-only feed is just not that great.

A solution may be a YouTube-like model, where feed readers either insert ads or charge their users monthly fees that are redistributed to feeds.