Saying RSS is dead is like saying XML is dead, even if you wish it was the case, it still works for a lot of people, and drives a lot of things. I also like my twitter search RSS feeds, fwiw.
When I discover someone saying "Twitter is a replacement for RSS" what I actually hear is "I'm a bleeding-edge-fanboy who can't be bothered with thinking about actual use-cases". Twitter and RSS are completely different approaches to content distribution and are suited to solving different parts of the problem.
There are some good ideas behind Twitter, but the actual implementation they've chosen is only really good for stream-of-consciousness content. That will never be a replacement for RSS.
I myself have long wished people on Twitter would stop writing interesting slice of life comments, and instead link to every single blog post they write.
That a VC firm created to focus solely on RSS-based applications has closed doesn't mean that RSS is dead, it means that a venture built on pure hype (not RSS itself, but the idea it can be immediately translated to cash) is dead.
Opening with 'Three months ago, Steve Gillmor wrote that “it’s time to get completely off RSS and switch to Twitter.”' (in about the same way cars replace wheels, I suppose), the article demonstrates how some people have learned nothing at all.
The little RSS icon appears next to almost every URL you browse to (with notable exception of HN..). It's become a basic, discoverable, read-only XML API for most online content. That a couple of VCs didn't manage to make money off some technology they read about in Wired doesn't mean it's useless.
RSS as a mainstream content delivery platform for the average user is a concept that is probably dying. People are getting more accustomed to feeds more in the form of Facebook and Twitter streams which use concepts that are easier to understand and use.
RSS for power users (somewhere between Joe Schmoe and Scoble) is definitely not dead or dying. There's a lot of room to improve the end user experience too. Hopefully Google Reader's popularity doesn't detract others from trying to do better.
RSS as a standardized content delivery mechanism for interoperability between systems is alive and well and not going anywhere any time soon. Having a standardized format makes interoperability so much easier. I should disclose that I work for a company that's heavily using RSS in this manor, so my viewpoints may be skewed.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 34.0 ms ] threadThere are some good ideas behind Twitter, but the actual implementation they've chosen is only really good for stream-of-consciousness content. That will never be a replacement for RSS.
Opening with 'Three months ago, Steve Gillmor wrote that “it’s time to get completely off RSS and switch to Twitter.”' (in about the same way cars replace wheels, I suppose), the article demonstrates how some people have learned nothing at all.
The little RSS icon appears next to almost every URL you browse to (with notable exception of HN..). It's become a basic, discoverable, read-only XML API for most online content. That a couple of VCs didn't manage to make money off some technology they read about in Wired doesn't mean it's useless.
RSS for power users (somewhere between Joe Schmoe and Scoble) is definitely not dead or dying. There's a lot of room to improve the end user experience too. Hopefully Google Reader's popularity doesn't detract others from trying to do better.
RSS as a standardized content delivery mechanism for interoperability between systems is alive and well and not going anywhere any time soon. Having a standardized format makes interoperability so much easier. I should disclose that I work for a company that's heavily using RSS in this manor, so my viewpoints may be skewed.
Do people that write articles like that understands the things they write about?