Thoughts on the future of RSS/feeds and keeping track of program release news

[Specular]

Not sure how others have managed to keep track of software news but I'd imagine feeds (RSS/Atom) are a key part of it for some. I know when I was using Firefox (pre-Quantum version) the feed reader I had set up was a useful part of how I kept track of many things, including some software both for bug ticket updates and general changelogs but also for auctions, blog posts, video subscriptions and other things of interest. Opera's integration (pre-Blink) was even more convenient.

Since I've switched to Vivaldi for much of my browsing mostly as a security precaution I really do miss a decent, local feed reader. Nothing I've come across seems as nice as my previous set up and I'm not fond of standalone clients since I feel feeds are better suited being alongside other browsing activities (especially given all links are from the web anyway). However I know that an integrated email client is coming to Vivaldi 'soon-ish' and it's rumored to bring with it an feed reader component which I'm hopeful for

The real reason I brought up this topic however is since feeds seems to have been sidelined by browsers in recent years, with most browsers removing in-built support (Firefox being the most recent IIRC). This trend by browsers, despite being a core part of what grew web media and blog-style sites for years (before popular websites and their own APIs become more commonly used for aggregation services/apps), would obviously have an effect on new users discovering the utility of feeds and I wondered how that may affect things relevant to this site such as keeping track of software activity for more sporadic contributors.

One could argue power users already recognize their usefulness but it's nevertheless a barrier to user adoption and I've even seen website owners consider dropping feeds since they have seen usage drop enough. It's a kind of chicken and egg thing. If users need to install something just to try something that really is most valuable when used for aggregating many things at once rather than necessarily individual feeds we may see a further decline in use and support from sites in the coming years.

[SYSTEM]

I'm using the Feedbro reader together with Vivaldi. It's clearly inspired by Opera's feed reader and about as good IMO.

One could argue power users already recognize their usefulness but it's nevertheless a barrier to user adoption and I've even seen website owners consider dropping feeds since they have seen usage drop enough. It's a kind of chicken and egg thing. If users need to install something just to try something that really is most valuable when used for aggregating many things at once rather than necessarily individual feeds we may see a further decline in use and support from sites in the coming years.

I agree. Feeds may well be overgoing a slow death.

[Userfriendly]

I'm completely dependant on RSS feeds to keep up to date that going without it makes me feel like a drug addict on withdrawal. The speed that one can consume information with any RSS feed reader is so fast that I can't imagine going back to relying on some website aggregator or individually checking each website manually. Especially when one has hundreds of feeds like I do, It's such more time efficient to keep track of news with a feed reader.

That's why I'm stuck using Firefox 56/Waterfox as my primary browser still because it has the live bookmarks and feed reader addons like Bamboo Feed Reader. I do have a secondary Firefox Quantum profile which im slowly configuring to match my desired browsing habits. I'm using Feedbro but it doesn't quite work as well as the Bamboo addon due to the limitations of webextension API. The Livemarks addon doesn't handle a hundreds of feeds very well either. It's quite sluggish for me.

I really want to move on to the latest Firefox version because its like night and day performance wise compared to Firefox 56 but sacrificing usability for performance isn't quite worth it yet for me. I might just have to eventually move on to using QuiteRSS or something and have 2 programs used for browsing the web instead of having one doing it all.

It does make me sad everyone is trying to move away from RSS feeds because they don't see it worth being maintained due to low usage rate. So maybe they see it as an easy feature to cut to save bandwidth and upkeep costs. Also using RSS bypasses ads so websites would rather not give you the option to skip ads that way.

The reason it's being used by so few people is because is because no one knows it exists! I don't see anyone or anywhere telling people how it works or why its good. The only way I found about RSS existence is because i'm naturally tech curious and played around with Firefox's features when I first started using it back in early 2000s. To me, it seems like it is just assumed everyone knows what RSS feeds are. So when a website has a feed available to subscribe to, all you see is that RSS icon in a random corner or down the very bottom of the webpage. The casual user probably doesn't even know what that RSS icon means and they don't care enough to find out. Especially younger people who grew up in the smartphone era. How would they know about this piece of tech? Never.

It does seem it will eventually go the way of the dodo. I hope the people out there who see it valuable keep it in its current zombified state at least.

[Midas]

I also very much depend on feeds to keep abreast of anything going on online.

My solution has been double pronged:

• I use a dedicated feed reader (Flym) for a very narrow choice of current affairs news sources on my phone -- only two, in fact;
• Most other sources I keep in an online Inoreader account (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inoreader), which I'm able to access anywhere via tablet or PC -- I check them at leisure, mostly on weekends, and I star anything I find important or to be read later.

[bitcoin]

fwiw i use gPodder all the time for audio podcasts

[Andrew Lee]

I am a self-confessed RSS feed addict too.

Ever since Google Reader went away, I installed TinyTinyRSS on my own VPS and have been using it ever since. Having a native Android client (payware, but only a few bucks) is a nice bonus, so I can feed my addiction on the go.

A friend of mine uses Feedly since the GR purge, but I didn't want to be dependent on another proprietary service that may drop dead any time soon.

I can't imagine RSS feed going away. None of the proprietary solutions (Google News, FB, native news clients) can match up to even 1% of its true power.

[Userfriendly]

Even when big sites like twitter removed their native RSS feed, services like http://twitrss.me/ will pop up to fill that need. There's also ones like https://feed43.com/ that let you make custom RSS from any website. Stuff like podcasts and most forums still use RSS. I don't see software repositories like majorgeeks and softpedia abandoning it because i'm sure they themselves use RSS to get notified if any software has been updated.

But yeah, power users who already know of its existence will keep using it. But the problem is how do we keep it relevant in the mainstream and next generation of people new to the internet especially now that Google and Firefox abandoned RSS. I guess its up to us to keep it alive and spread the gospel. Either by telling a friend or informing everyone through blog posts like when ghacks feature software and let people know how cool it is. It could be taught in school in some computer class as a basic function of how to browse the internet. Who knows, maybe something better will replace it and we can switch over to that too.

[IzSublime]

I totally depend on RSS feed to keep myself up to date.

[Midas]

The problem is how do we keep it relevant in the mainstream and next generation of people new to the internet especially now that Google and Firefox abandoned RSS. I guess its up to us to keep it alive and spread the gospel.

I have been doing precisely that to the few young ones within ear reach... not too many, I'm afraid.

[webfork]

I'm completely dependant on RSS feeds to keep up to date that going without it makes me feel like a drug addict on withdrawal.

Could you give us a quick rundown on what you have running on RSS and why it's so crucial? I'm hoping that, if you can make the case for why this is so important, you can pull more people into it and then it can gain some popularity. Or that's the hope.

For my part, I've tested a lot of RSS tools and used it from time to time, but it never really became part of my workflow just because it seemed to never have the data I was looking for. At least for my work in freeware, I almost always have to go to the website to get details like license, changelog, screenshots, etc. so eventually I just switched to cycling through the websites alone.

[Userfriendly]

I'm completely dependant on RSS feeds to keep up to date that going without it makes me feel like a drug addict on withdrawal.

Could you give us a quick rundown on what you have running on RSS and why it's so crucial? I'm hoping that, if you can make the case for why this is so important, you can pull more people into it and then it can gain some popularity. Or that's the hope.

For my part, I've tested a lot of RSS tools and used it from time to time, but it never really became part of my workflow just because it seemed to never have the data I was looking for. At least for my work in freeware, I almost always have to go to the website to get details like license, changelog, screenshots, etc. so eventually I just switched to cycling through the websites alone.

Well its pretty much everything. News from all kinds of stuff, software updates, blog updates, forum threads being created and replied to, youtube channels video updates, twitter posts, Slickdeals and discount trackers so I don't miss a good price on anything i'm interested in buying. keeping updated on the 30+ subreddits I like reading that has to do with tech, software, anime, the many videogames I play, anime stuff, sports, politics, movies, random podcasts, torrents, etc.

There's so much stuff I like to keep track of that I won't have time to get through them all if I went through each site individually. Of course I would still have to actually visit the websites for the actual detailed information like changelogs and screenshots. But RSS helps me quickly sift through the ones that interest me. Just quickly seeing the title or subject matter in one page and in bulk with RSS just helps me be aware of what exactly I would like to know more efficiently. If you take the casual person who probably visits a few bookmarked sites and just googles everything he wants to know about in the moment, I would have soaked up way more information in an RSS reader in the same amount of time he would have google searched a single thing.

I'm sure its not a problem with people who have very little interests in anything else besides like one or two things so they can just have that handful of websites they can just keep their browser tabs always open on and rotate between them. But for me having so many varied interests in many things, I have like maybe almost 200 RSS feeds. I could probably have more but don't out of laziness due to having already way too much.

I'm probably what you call an information or digital hoarder. Many of these things I probably don't need to know about but I want to anyway. None of it is important and I can probably live without it but It's what keeps the internet interesting to me. Feels like the world is in my fingertips. My friends always wonder how I know so much random useful to useless stuff. Well the answer is RSS.

[Specular]

Well its pretty much everything... Slickdeals and discount trackers so I don't miss a good price on anything i'm interested in buying.

This reminded me to mention that feeds for eBay/classifieds are incredibly useful for those wanting to find hard-to-find items, not just for necessarily good prices but discovering when the items even appear for sale to begin with. eBay obscured access to their RSS feed links but they're still available via a URL parameter last I checked.

Sometimes it can be years before some item appears and having the notification come to you instead of actively having to log in or check manually periodically saves a ton of effort.