Syndication

On a drive with Talia yesterday, I wanted to tell her about some of the interesting things I discovered while writing my Input 2024 post. The conversation went something like…

SaadiaLet me tell you about something I wrote, since I know you don't read my blog.TaliaHow do you know I don't read it?SaadiaBecause you don't use an RSS reader! Do you?TaliaNo, you're right, I don't.SaadiaSo how would you know when I've posted something new? You're not going to go check it everyday. It's fine! You don't need to. Let me just tell you about it.

You might have heard about this “Indie Web” movement, also called the “Small Web”, “Web 1.0”, or “Geocities Web”. It’s a push to reclaim something about the internet that we lost along the way. I think that something was, specifically, RSS.

The best web died on July 1, 2013.

In the days following it’s closure, Marco Arment suggested that the shutdown of Google Reader was a strategic move to push users toward sharing content on Google+. While the plan didn’t fully succeed, the overarching trend became clear: RSS feeds were on the way out, and social networks were taking their place.

Ever since then we’ve been on a free-fall into short-form, high-speed, hyper-stimulating, outrage-inducing, brain-rotting, algorithm-pleasing “content”.

RSS lives on in podcasting. It’s a remnant of the Indie-Web which persisted, and is thriving. Could long-form textual content ever see that same sort of popularity? Or are those days behind us?

Here’s an app idea: Imagine a mashup of Apple Podcasts and Apple News. Your feeds are arranged in beautiful bento layouts, and a Discovery tab helps you find more blogs to follow. There’s a section called “Recommended based on my Feeds”, and another called “New Perspectives to Explore”.

The truth is that the audience for this blog is limited to those who have a habit of using an RSS reeder, and that’s a pretty small demographic. I’d love to see an initiative that included RSS education, promotion, and discovery. What could we do to bring back RSS?

Update: As though to further confirm the idea that RSS is dead, I was having coffee with Rob yesterday. He’s a marketing manager for a big tech company. He’s worked in tech his whole career. I asked him whether he uses an RSS reader and he laughed at the idea.

Today, another friend came around – Jeremy. He’s an avid gardener, and started an amazing substack related to gardening and caring for the planet. I told him that he should write a new post, and that I’d add his substack to my RSS feeds. He replied, “What’s that?”.