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dvt
I think that RSS solves a different problem (namely, syndication) than del.icio.us, and, more recently, FB, Twitter, Reddit, etc. (namely, content discovery).

I do agree that the end-user usefulness of something like RSS may have been overstated, but RSS remains a useful tool in some contexts. For example, most (all?) Android/iOS news widgets make use of RSS. Google News also makes use of RSS. I'm sure there are many such examples.

jnazario
you describe some use cases of RSS that are machine to machine, and that may be true, but i was focusing on the end user that Reader targets, namely people.
sigsergv
No one reads RSS directly, in XML. So it's actually doesn't matter that it's m-m protocol.
ADent
It is a shame it is dead. Hey wait I just read this in Reeder in my iPhone via RSS. I must be dead too?
kenoh
Looks like I didn't read this article, linked from an RSS feed.
dccoolgai
Ditto - would be interesting to see what pct. Of people viewed this from that dead system...
sarvinc
I use RSS, Google Reader, and Reeder on my iPad/iPhone. Still I think it's fair to say that RSS is dead because the general public does not use it. Of course that's also a good reason to kill off G+. Google is killing Reader because they no longer see the benefit of providing the service or they get a benefit by not providing the service.

I would've been happy to pay for Google Reader. Truth is I'll move to another RSS service and be happy to pay. I'm not sure what it costs Goole to run Reader so this is all conjecture.