Google Reader Killed RSS(mcfunley.com)
mcfunley.com
Google Reader Killed RSS
https://mcfunley.com/google-reader-killed-rss
44 comments
There's so little here, Reader was bad because it was good and it killed other people's attempts at making an RSS reader, but it was also bad because it didn't have social features? Hard, hard disagree. I wanted an RSS reader, not a social stream, and Google Reader filled that role spectacularly. I read more independent sources those days than I do now thanks to it.
I just wanted a reader too, but it's certainly true that once Reader came out, there really wasn't much room for exploration or experimentation. Reader was pretty much what you got, like it or not.
I use feedly these days, because I don't really need anything fancy. Maybe there just wasn't much to do in that space, but it's hard to say, because Google stomped on it.
I use feedly these days, because I don't really need anything fancy. Maybe there just wasn't much to do in that space, but it's hard to say, because Google stomped on it.
Reader did have social features which differentiated it from other feed aggregators. The power was in the network effect; if your friends used Reader then you would use it too. Without the social features it was not that great; just another aggregator.
To some extent Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. have replaced this need, but with a lot of other noise.
To some extent Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. have replaced this need, but with a lot of other noise.
Without the social features it was great, because it aggregated your feeds without needing to run on your machine. (It also stored the entire history of the feed without taking up storage on your machine.)
I used to use Thunderbird for RSS feeds. That failed one day while I was on vacation -- the PC shut down for whatever reason -- losing track of what had happened while I was away. Not a huge deal, sure, but Reader was a huge improvement because it couldn't fail like that. It tracked everything and knew what was new and what was old with no chance of slipping.
(It also let you read blogs that were blocked by the Great Firewall, back before google itself was blocked.)
Lacking a free online RSS reader, I use Thunderbird again now, but Reader was better.
I used to use Thunderbird for RSS feeds. That failed one day while I was on vacation -- the PC shut down for whatever reason -- losing track of what had happened while I was away. Not a huge deal, sure, but Reader was a huge improvement because it couldn't fail like that. It tracked everything and knew what was new and what was old with no chance of slipping.
(It also let you read blogs that were blocked by the Great Firewall, back before google itself was blocked.)
Lacking a free online RSS reader, I use Thunderbird again now, but Reader was better.
About social features, wouldn't that be great if RSS itself can allow more interaction? For example: Allowing reader to post/view comment and "likes" directly on their RSS reader?
Read-only publishing system is less attractive than interactive ones, people love to talk about stuff.
Read-only publishing system is less attractive than interactive ones, people love to talk about stuff.
Ah the 3 month article rotation that RSS is dead. Yet I use RSS and Atom feeds as much as I did in the Google Reader days and the IndieWeb is starting to get hot as people finally realize publishing just in silos is a bad idea. Do not bother clicking on this regurgitated nonsense.
Social media tried to kill RSS because they wanted you on their site. Feeds are very much alive and the best content is far from Facebook or Twitter.
Social media tried to kill RSS because they wanted you on their site. Feeds are very much alive and the best content is far from Facebook or Twitter.
rss isn't dead, but i've certainly been to sites/blogs in the past that will have facebook/twitter links but no rss feed (yes, ones that i would like to keep tabs on). that said, it seems creators are generally receptive to adding rss if they can.
Any good recommendations for RSS feeds to follow?
Completely agreed. I don't understand the word "killed". I subscribe to 15-20 podcast feeds with RSS. I've noticed it getting harder to find RSS feeds, but put that down to sites that want to be visited more often.
OK, I can live without their product. It will probably be stuffed with ads anyways ... ads never 'personalized' despite that being a favorite excuse for all the tracking.
OK, I can live without their product. It will probably be stuffed with ads anyways ... ads never 'personalized' despite that being a favorite excuse for all the tracking.
RSS is fine. I got this link via RSS. The web-hosted RSS readers wrapped in proprietary sharing and discussion features died. I'm ok with that.
I read this because this post came up on Feedly.
I have 168 subscriptions.
I don't feel especially "killed".
I have 168 subscriptions.
I don't feel especially "killed".
Same!
He means in the sense that the automobile killed the horse.
And I agree, and was tweeting about exactly this yesterday. https://twitter.com/eric_wvgg/status/1207374861955469317
The problem isn’t that Google killed Reader, it’s that Reader got such traction to begin with. There were always better alternatives, and they’re still around and better than ever, but they aren’t doing anything to make RSS more accessible, user-friendly, or prevalent.
And I agree, and was tweeting about exactly this yesterday. https://twitter.com/eric_wvgg/status/1207374861955469317
The problem isn’t that Google killed Reader, it’s that Reader got such traction to begin with. There were always better alternatives, and they’re still around and better than ever, but they aren’t doing anything to make RSS more accessible, user-friendly, or prevalent.
What's not friendly about Feedly, for instance? You don't have to know shit about RSS to use it.
I totally agree with your tweet there! It's waaaay too hard to figure out for most people.
"There were always better alternatives"
I always thought Reader was the best, I'm happy with NewsBlur, but Reader was great.
"There were always better alternatives"
I always thought Reader was the best, I'm happy with NewsBlur, but Reader was great.
What Google Reader also had was a good API, which let you sync what you read. I used Google Reader more through the API than in the web interface.
With TinyTinyRSS and a plugin, I have similar functionality, but it still isn't quite as good as what Google had. That said, TinyTinyRSS has a better web interface than Google ever did.
With TinyTinyRSS and a plugin, I have similar functionality, but it still isn't quite as good as what Google had. That said, TinyTinyRSS has a better web interface than Google ever did.
My experience with TTRSS's web interface isn't super positive (though I'm not using the latest version, in fairness), so that says something about Reader's interface.
What fast, free, information-dense, no-bullshit alternative was there to Reader?
I remember a life before RSS. You would literally subscribe to online news emails delivered to your email inbox on a daily basis. And for me it was a Hotmail email inbox with a USA TODAY email delivery.
Every morning, a USA TODAY news email delivery in my Hotmail inbox.
Then came RSS. I didn't understand or pay attention.
Time passed. People died. People claimed RSS died. Podcasts rose into popularity.
I began paying attention to podcasts. And began subscribing to them via RSS via an Android App. I am doing this still, now, today.
For me RSS is not dead. I actively look out for RSS feeds on podcasts, online web comics, and similar.
I understand that Google Reader had a "bull in china shop" influence against RSS, but for people like me there is still RSS.
Every morning, a USA TODAY news email delivery in my Hotmail inbox.
Then came RSS. I didn't understand or pay attention.
Time passed. People died. People claimed RSS died. Podcasts rose into popularity.
I began paying attention to podcasts. And began subscribing to them via RSS via an Android App. I am doing this still, now, today.
For me RSS is not dead. I actively look out for RSS feeds on podcasts, online web comics, and similar.
I understand that Google Reader had a "bull in china shop" influence against RSS, but for people like me there is still RSS.
The way I remember life before rss was adding a site to my favorite list then visiting them all on friday night and saturday morning to see what was new.
I am subscribed to 100s of feeds via RSS. It is well and truly alive and most sites support RSS feeds.
FWIW, I self host TinyTinyRSS which works great and has an excellent mobile app as well.
FWIW, I self host TinyTinyRSS which works great and has an excellent mobile app as well.
TinyTinyRSS is how I got to this page just now. Not google reader, but pretty reasonable.
Ha ha, me too :)
Just to add my voice to the choir, I too got to see this article from rss. I do however think that rss could have been a lot bigger than it is now: it hasn't gone mainstream, though it has had enough advantages to have dome so.
It has reached mainstream in one regard: as a carrier for podcasts. Given the wealth of user friendly tools to consume podcasts, this is perhaps not such a big surprise.
It has reached mainstream in one regard: as a carrier for podcasts. Given the wealth of user friendly tools to consume podcasts, this is perhaps not such a big surprise.
You know.. RSS killed pointcast. Pointcast was actually much more like google reader, it was an app that would grab news from your favorite sites, and show you in the application, or as your screensaver. it was so popular, many companies banned it outright, because it had the effect of killing the bandwidth on very expensive at the time T1 lines when half the employee's computers tried to download tons of news sites at the start of every hour.
RSS came out later, if I remember right, as a way to do this without killing internet connections. you could grab the feeds, but only download the content when you were ready to read it.
pointcast was actually really nice. Now get off my lawn, you damn kids
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PointCast_%28dotcom%29
RSS came out later, if I remember right, as a way to do this without killing internet connections. you could grab the feeds, but only download the content when you were ready to read it.
pointcast was actually really nice. Now get off my lawn, you damn kids
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PointCast_%28dotcom%29
Whether Google Reader hastened the decline in popularity of RSS, or whether Google accurately predicted the decline in popularity of RSS and killed Google Reader at just the right time is hard to say.
But it is weird that I was regularly consuming content from 50ish sources via Google Reader, and then, when Google Reader ceased, I just ... didn't really notice that I wasn't using an RSS reader anymore. I bookmarked about a half-dozen sources and now browse their content directly, but the rest were just stuff I casually read, and that's largely been replaced by stuff that surfaces on social media.
But it is weird that I was regularly consuming content from 50ish sources via Google Reader, and then, when Google Reader ceased, I just ... didn't really notice that I wasn't using an RSS reader anymore. I bookmarked about a half-dozen sources and now browse their content directly, but the rest were just stuff I casually read, and that's largely been replaced by stuff that surfaces on social media.
I would say browser makers are more at blame here.
They never really implemented features to discover feeds so it was always up to the webmaster to include some "what are feeds and how to subscribe" pages. Those are mostly gone now, though the feeds often are still there, just hard to find.
If we want them to become more popular, we just need to tell people about them. But then again, I always struggled to make many of my friends and family - even many other techies - understand what they were and why they are great.
Still, they are around and indispensable or many power users.
If we want them to become more popular, we just need to tell people about them. But then again, I always struggled to make many of my friends and family - even many other techies - understand what they were and why they are great.
Still, they are around and indispensable or many power users.
I loved RSS for a while, and my client of choice was Google Reader. It solved aggregation of the articles, feeds implicitly have inherent notification, and the standardization of presentation elements bring calm to the consumer experience.
RSS has its flaws, some like the non uniformity of discovery were starting to standardize through customs, others, like the scaling and maintaining being left up to the individual while arguably a strength were at the time poorly supported.
When Google Reader disappeared there were few other quality readers polished enough to take over. Many offers tried to rush into the vacuum, some by revigorating their development, others by rushing out a Google Reader clone, but for the most part people did not follow because (a) alternatives were less slick and (b) for many the required housekeeping they had neglected for too long meant their overall feed file had accumulated so much cruft that they didn't want to reboot the effort.
I still do not know exactly why Reader which was extremely successful at the time was given the boot. I can imagine less add engagement, and also we were supposed to transition to Wave or G+ or was it still Orkut at the time?
Anyway, for the internet masses server side aggregation won, client side aggregation lost. The demise of Google Reader most certainly accelerated the transition, but longer term I do not know whether if it had been left to evolve it wouldn't have morphed it into another one of the server side aggregated/curated walled gardens years ago.
RSS has its flaws, some like the non uniformity of discovery were starting to standardize through customs, others, like the scaling and maintaining being left up to the individual while arguably a strength were at the time poorly supported.
When Google Reader disappeared there were few other quality readers polished enough to take over. Many offers tried to rush into the vacuum, some by revigorating their development, others by rushing out a Google Reader clone, but for the most part people did not follow because (a) alternatives were less slick and (b) for many the required housekeeping they had neglected for too long meant their overall feed file had accumulated so much cruft that they didn't want to reboot the effort.
I still do not know exactly why Reader which was extremely successful at the time was given the boot. I can imagine less add engagement, and also we were supposed to transition to Wave or G+ or was it still Orkut at the time?
Anyway, for the internet masses server side aggregation won, client side aggregation lost. The demise of Google Reader most certainly accelerated the transition, but longer term I do not know whether if it had been left to evolve it wouldn't have morphed it into another one of the server side aggregated/curated walled gardens years ago.
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All you nerds want to brag about how you still use RSS (probably from emacs or something) so much that you totally miss the point:
> You’re having a funeral for the tame old fox that was mysteriously living in your henhouse.
Google cornered a market then handed it to Facebook and Twitter. You don't use those? Good for you! I can't wait to hear how you don't have a TV either. Many people do. The author is suggesting that if Google hadn't used their clout to take over the space then a more worthy competitor (ostensibly their own project) could have prevented the takeover by centralized publishing silos. Disagree with that if you like but spare us the rss-brags.
> You’re having a funeral for the tame old fox that was mysteriously living in your henhouse.
Google cornered a market then handed it to Facebook and Twitter. You don't use those? Good for you! I can't wait to hear how you don't have a TV either. Many people do. The author is suggesting that if Google hadn't used their clout to take over the space then a more worthy competitor (ostensibly their own project) could have prevented the takeover by centralized publishing silos. Disagree with that if you like but spare us the rss-brags.
No it didn't. I never stopped using RSS. Today I use Netnewswire and Feedbin.
I subscribe to hundreds of sites through an RSS reader, and I got a link to this post through RSS too. The author's own site even supports RSS, so I could subscribe to his content too. But I won't because I can't stand it when randoms on the internet claim something has been killed when it is very much alive and well. That's the kind of inflammatory banter I expect to see on Twitter.
Nah, Google Reader was better than alternatives when it existed, and is still better than every single alternative existing now. I just can't get used to Feedly's interface even though it's the best one I've found (don't bother listing the others, I've tried them all). As a result, I barely use RSS feeds at all.
Google Reader was a simple RSS facility free of ads and free of yet another login facility. It might also have been one of the few web based readers that required no client. Others came along afterwards using GOOG authentication and were web based. We've survived in the post-Google apocalyptic world.
RSS will never die. After Reader detonated I moved to Thunderbird and have been using it ever since.
HN is becoming a tad repetitive...
Claims: RSS is dead
Reality: no, its not
Claims: Climate change claim "X" is bullshit after all
Reality: no its not
Claims: Diet "x" is actually good/bad for you
Reality: Everything in moderation people...
Etc...
we seem to be going through the same old cycle over and over.
Claims: RSS is dead
Reality: no, its not
Claims: Climate change claim "X" is bullshit after all
Reality: no its not
Claims: Diet "x" is actually good/bad for you
Reality: Everything in moderation people...
Etc...
we seem to be going through the same old cycle over and over.
Are you suggesting we should give each position on any topic as much praise and support as any other, regardless of its merit?
Or are you suggesting we should implement a sort of stack-exchange canonical topic/response regime where a group of 'community managers' rigorously partition the subjects into an imposed clustered domain by fast closing and marking as 'duplicates'?
Sure, this site has it's typical positions, and topics do tend to be revisited often, but isn't that the nature of a more conversational social space?
Or are you suggesting we should implement a sort of stack-exchange canonical topic/response regime where a group of 'community managers' rigorously partition the subjects into an imposed clustered domain by fast closing and marking as 'duplicates'?
Sure, this site has it's typical positions, and topics do tend to be revisited often, but isn't that the nature of a more conversational social space?
Well google helped in a few ways, and fbook dealt the mortal blows imho.
Fbook got real open.. open APIs.. (as a busniess, publisher, etc), add your stuff, get into everyone's feed..
people starting using fbook as their rss reader.. you started seeing the like button everywhere and less of the rss button on sites.
google helped with this as word got out that they were penalizing sites for blogrolls and such.. a lot of people depended on third party rss parsers (presenters?) - and the juice was not worth the squeeze to have a convenient feed if it killed your google rank and all your traffic.
While google traffic was going down, facebook engagement was going up and things looked okay that way.
It wasn't until a while, (couple? / few(?)) years later that businesses started to realize fbook was manipulating the feeds.. a few started to say hey this isn't right!
But that message has not gotten to most of the users. Most still assume that they are getting the latest posts from the people / places they have 'liked' - and they do not know.
More and more businesses have started to notice the less and less traffic, and some have even been shaken down by fbook, offering to put them back into the chronological feed if they pay a price..
Users are now swamped with other things in their feed and they don't really notice.
I chuckled hearing Kim Kamando go off about this on her radio show a while back.. after hearing her tell so many people for a couple years about fbook this, and use fbook for that.. of course, many of her listeners never heard that show, as they had gotten use to getting updates for her shows through the fbk feed.
there's been a few other things over the years. The my.yahoo, pageflakes, startpages and similar never updated with modern graphics and thumbnails.. no one thought to give them a scroll feed or algorithms to push certain rss feeds to the forefront.. and the masses got use to the UI of the fbook non stop scroll..
I think to bring rss back we need more rss apps, ones with fbook like scroll, ones with sidescroll graphically like taptu had.. options for chronological only, add certain feeds to 'show first' - tap a feed info to explore more / similar..
I don't know which ones have these options as I only test ones that are ad free or premium.. and it's hard to suggest people use the ones I like.
but also a service that will send rss links to whichever app you want... (and keep an opml for you, with current and previous versions of your subscribed lists); i have not moved my reader and feeds to my new phone as it's a chore one by one.
like a send-this-rss button on a page.. you click it (tap it) - it sends a url to a portal like about.me - which then pops up a list of choices to send that link to your app, to your fbk, to your whatever -
Love to have a segway screen that gives options when you subscribe to rss to choose 'all entries' 'certain category(s)', etc
I use to have many rss feeds for certain categories or keywords parsed into different places.. then they changes, I could never find most of them like there use to - even using search engines to find the feed for various places' category like yahoo news, bloomb and such..
Something similar to what you see on some music videos links on youtube - when you click them you get a list of places to do what you want , amazon, spotify, applemusic, beatport, etc
If we add a new spec to pull with sent data, like ask for rss and send a few kb of data to get an enhanced feed *while giving some creds for stats, and ugh possible ad targeting, maybe data showing i'm-premium-subscriber give me all the patreon perks) - they will get more resources on the other end.. and graphapi handles this well today and was not a thing when rss 2 came out right?
/some thoughts.. not complete
Fbook got real open.. open APIs.. (as a busniess, publisher, etc), add your stuff, get into everyone's feed..
people starting using fbook as their rss reader.. you started seeing the like button everywhere and less of the rss button on sites.
google helped with this as word got out that they were penalizing sites for blogrolls and such.. a lot of people depended on third party rss parsers (presenters?) - and the juice was not worth the squeeze to have a convenient feed if it killed your google rank and all your traffic.
While google traffic was going down, facebook engagement was going up and things looked okay that way.
It wasn't until a while, (couple? / few(?)) years later that businesses started to realize fbook was manipulating the feeds.. a few started to say hey this isn't right!
But that message has not gotten to most of the users. Most still assume that they are getting the latest posts from the people / places they have 'liked' - and they do not know.
More and more businesses have started to notice the less and less traffic, and some have even been shaken down by fbook, offering to put them back into the chronological feed if they pay a price..
Users are now swamped with other things in their feed and they don't really notice.
I chuckled hearing Kim Kamando go off about this on her radio show a while back.. after hearing her tell so many people for a couple years about fbook this, and use fbook for that.. of course, many of her listeners never heard that show, as they had gotten use to getting updates for her shows through the fbk feed.
there's been a few other things over the years. The my.yahoo, pageflakes, startpages and similar never updated with modern graphics and thumbnails.. no one thought to give them a scroll feed or algorithms to push certain rss feeds to the forefront.. and the masses got use to the UI of the fbook non stop scroll..
I think to bring rss back we need more rss apps, ones with fbook like scroll, ones with sidescroll graphically like taptu had.. options for chronological only, add certain feeds to 'show first' - tap a feed info to explore more / similar..
I don't know which ones have these options as I only test ones that are ad free or premium.. and it's hard to suggest people use the ones I like.
but also a service that will send rss links to whichever app you want... (and keep an opml for you, with current and previous versions of your subscribed lists); i have not moved my reader and feeds to my new phone as it's a chore one by one.
like a send-this-rss button on a page.. you click it (tap it) - it sends a url to a portal like about.me - which then pops up a list of choices to send that link to your app, to your fbk, to your whatever -
Love to have a segway screen that gives options when you subscribe to rss to choose 'all entries' 'certain category(s)', etc
I use to have many rss feeds for certain categories or keywords parsed into different places.. then they changes, I could never find most of them like there use to - even using search engines to find the feed for various places' category like yahoo news, bloomb and such..
Something similar to what you see on some music videos links on youtube - when you click them you get a list of places to do what you want , amazon, spotify, applemusic, beatport, etc
If we add a new spec to pull with sent data, like ask for rss and send a few kb of data to get an enhanced feed *while giving some creds for stats, and ugh possible ad targeting, maybe data showing i'm-premium-subscriber give me all the patreon perks) - they will get more resources on the other end.. and graphapi handles this well today and was not a thing when rss 2 came out right?
/some thoughts.. not complete
RSS died because clients made easy to cut ads and hard to track engagement
RSS now are most often than not just links to the articles, cutting away all the original convenience of the format
RSS now are most often than not just links to the articles, cutting away all the original convenience of the format
>RSS now are most often than not just links to the articles, cutting away all the original convenience of the format
Which is why there's a billion* services that generate RSS feeds for websites with their full content.
Which is why there's a billion* services that generate RSS feeds for websites with their full content.
Agreed. RSS readily supports password protected feeds, as does my rss reader of choice, but even the paywalled content I subscribe to almost never supports that. I've asked why and the answer is it's just not tenable given how vital engagement and usage data is to the internal functioning of those organizations.