RSS is undead
Danny Crichton,
TechCrunch,
Apr 10, 2018
The gist of this article is that RSS is beyond saving. Even if it appears to have life, the fact that big companies are turning their backs on it means that it has no real future. One failing, writes Danny Crichton, is that it doesn't prioritize content for the user, as illustrated by the futility of subscribing to the Washington Post RSS feed, which has 1200 articles per day. "How exactly do you find good RSS feeds? Once you have found them, how do you group and prune them over time to maximize signal?" But even more significant, he writes, is the lack of analytics on the publisher side. "RSS doesn't allow publishers to track user behavior." Also, "RSS also offers very few opportunities for branding content effectively." What RSS enabled, which commercial providers couldn't stand, were things like choice and privacy. There may not be a business model for these - which, of course, is the author's point. But they are what readers want. Which is why RSS refuses to die.
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