Sure, RSS Is Dead — Just Like the Web Is Dead
A brush fire has been swirling through the blogosphere of late over whether RSS is dead, dying, or possibly severely injured and in need of assistance. It seems to have started with a post from UK-based web designer Kroc Camen that got picked up by Hacker News and re-tweeted a lot. The flames were fanned by a blog post from TechCrunch that drove RSS developer Dave Winer into a bit of a Twitter frenzy. But is RSS actually doomed, or even ailing? Not really. Like plenty of other technologies, it is just becoming part of the plumbing of the real-time web.
Camen’s criticisms seem focused on the fact that Firefox doesn’t make it easy to find or subscribe to RSS feeds from within the browser (although Mozilla staffer Asa Dotzler takes issue with that case in a comment near the bottom of the post). Instead of the usual RSS icon, he says, there is nothing except an entry in a menu. But did anyone other than a handful of geeks and tech aficionados make use of those RSS icons? It’s not clear that many regular web users have done so — or ever will. Browsers like Internet Explorer have had built-in support for RSS for years, but there’s little sign of it becoming mainstream.
So can we say that RSS is dead? Sure — in the same way that HTML is dead, or the web itself is dead (if the “death of RSS” idea seems familiar, that’s because it has reared its head several times before). There used to be plenty of HTML editors out there, which allowed people to create their own websites and web pages, but they never really went mainstream either, and HTML has evolved to the point where it’s a specialty that requires actual programming skills in order to be effective. Is that bad thing? Not if you make a living as a web designer. Hypertext markup language has become part of the plumbing of the web, and now allows far more utility than it used to.
In a similar vein, Wired magazine recently advanced the argument that the web is dead, based largely on some faulty data and a perception that apps for devices like the iPhone and iPad are taking over from the regular web. While there is some reason for concern about walled gardens such as Facebook and the control that Apple continues to exert over its ecosystem — as both the web’s inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee and law professor Tim Wu have argued in separate opinion pieces — the reality is that the web is continuing to evolve, and apps could well be just an interim step in that evolution.
In the same way, RSS has become a crucial part of how web content gets fed from blogs and other sites into real-time services such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as aggregation apps like Flipboard, as CEO Mike McCue noted during the debate between Winer and TechCrunch. Do Twitter and Facebook compete with RSS to some extent, in terms of content discovery? Sure they do — but they also benefit from it. Along with real-time publishing tools such as Pubsubhubbub, RSS is one of the things that provides a foundation for the apps and services we see all around us, including real-time search (and plenty of people still use RSS readers, says venture capital blogger Fred Wilson).
The fact that RSS may be fading in terms of mainstream user awareness is actually a good thing rather than a bad one. The sooner people can forget about it because it just works in the background, the better off we’ll all be — in the same way many of us have forgotten (if we ever knew) how the internal-combustion engine works, because we no longer have to pull over and fix them ourselves.
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Post and thumbnail photo courtesy of Flickr user Les Chatfield
Great post, I’ve seen a lot of controversy swirling around this issue, including Asa’s rather rude reply to Camen’s criticism. My own take is that neither RSS nor the Web are dead. It’s Firefox that is actually dying. Mozilla has fallen behind the curve in terms of speed, agility and support for modern standards, and Asa’s chest-beating comments seem to focus on what Mozilla did in the past (innovated RSS support in the Web browser).
Yes, I think Camen’s post was as much about Firefox as it was about RSS, and Firefox has had trouble making headway, particularly against Chrome (see my post earlier today about Firefox’s market share growth vs. Chrome)
I also agree this is as much about Firefox as RSS.
There’s been discussion elsewhere that RSS is a specialist, hard to use tool for more technically sophisticated users, while Twitter is for everyman (or woman).
Maybe. But Mozilla would be wise to cater for those tech savvy users — they are the people who decide which browsers others get to use. Abandoning RSS could see specialist users move back to IE or look elsewhere.
Dying ?
It just took the first place as Europe’s most used browser ahead of IE and (the tech darling) Chrome.
Dying indeed.
Actually those stats showed that IE has lost market share to Chrome, FireFox usage hasn’t changed significantly.
Exactly! I was just going to comment, “why does it matter anymore that Firefox makes it difficult? People use Chrome these days anyway.”
I don’t have the privileged of having the fastest computer around and Firefox just makes life harder for me (even Thunderbird does sometimes) because it slows down my computer significantly. Not to mention, I live in Indonesia and you don’t want to know how slow the connection gets around here. And to add to that: the add-ons are kind of a hassle compared to Chrome’s extensions.
Sadly, like Firefox, I haven’t been able to keep up. I don’t make a living as a designer, but I haven’t mastered the latest HTML. It’s either getting a bit too complicated or I’m just not aging very well.
Hi Mathew,
Happy New Year! Best wishes for 2011.
I think that there is a more interesting angle to this story than RSS, versus tweets versus Website crawling for content syndication.
The biggest lesson we have learnt in feedly over the last two years is that the hard part is the personalization – the creation and maintenance of the users interest graph (not how you syndicate content).
Twitter is very suffering from the same problem: who are the interesting people to follow, how do you go beyond what is happening right now to what is important/most relevant, how to you understand and cluster things, etc. etc..
The core innovation in this space will happen in how easy and transparent the personalization will be and how effective and contextual the filtering will be.
Twitter is a great sharing and amazing networking tool but it does not really have any competitive advantage when it come to personalization and filtering, specially given that the users interest graph will be most likely fragmented across different services [twitter, facebook, google reader, quora, stackoverflow, dribbble, flickr, etc..].
What facebook is doing with the like buttons and the open graph is a lot more interesting.
The battle for the hyper personalization is just starting. My guess is that there will not be one solution but actually a lot of different experiences. Ideally all those experiences will be built on top of an interest graph which will be open and portable.
Edwin, co-founder/CEO feedly.com
Thanks, Edwin — I agree that personalization and filters for all the info we have coming at us is a big hole the market needs to fill. Thanks for the comment.
Extremely well put. Hopefully we can turn the DEFCON alarm back down now and all breathe deeply.
I do think RSS has actually achieved mainstream adoption though. The truth is, ton’s of users use RSS every day but most just don’t realize that’s what it is or care.
Just like tons of people use HTML, JPEGS, MP3s, etc. All “mainstream” technologies but not necessarily household words, and they never will be. To the end-user, the product just works and who cares what’s under the hood.
The average end-user doesn’t give a damn. He/She just wants to read their news.
A few months ago I finally unsubscribed to most blog networks that will remain anonymous and added pretty much everything GigaOm offers en masse.
This article and the recent TC debacle about RSS is an example of why. While everyone else seems to be circling the drain with more sensationalist headlines and the negative comments such stories attract, I can come to GigaOm for more honest and reasonable analysis. This is also reflected in the good natured comments people leave, even if the people posting the comments don’t necessarily agree with the author.
Thank you Mathew, Om Malik and everyone else at GigaOm for your integrity and for continuing to setting a good example in the face of all this negativity.
Thanks, Ruben — that is a big compliment. Much appreciated!
One thing often overlooked is technologies are like old soldiers, they never die, they just fade away.
There are people still using Apple Newton Messagepads, I guess there may be some still using Lynx.
Absolutely. There are still many mainframes still chugging along….
If the HTML spec was frozen at version 2.0 then the web could have easily died. RSS as a consumer facing technology is critically ill. The irony is that Winer is most responsible for this result. He is more concerned about his legacy and he fears that loosening his grip on the spec would diminish that. If Dave was as smart as he thinks he is then he would accept that RSS needs to evolve and become more usable to people that don’t care about its technological underpinnings. It should just work and obviously it hasn’t and won’t until something changes.
I switched to Chrome from Safari and the RSS functionality is one of the things I miss.
And 125 years ago Zarathustra proclaimed God and religion dead. That news also appears to have been slightly premature.
Great post, thanks, i’m not sure Rss or web is dead but your rss link is really dead lol
What will make the web of tomorrow is the gain of time, centralisation but with full control of your datas…
indeed i think web is dead
Its too premature to say that RSS is dead.You are right that it is going in background and going in background does not mean that it has lost its relevance.Indeed it simply means that it is going to play a vital role.
How can RSS be dead when so many website is based on this.Techmeme,All top etc.So this is a baseless debate.
Exactly. Things like this do not die. They simple evolve
Maybe I’m missing the point but no less than two hours of my daily web browsing (I’m low-balling this) is spent in Google Reader, not to mention the news apps I use on my phone and Cr-48, on top of Twitter, that use RSS to deliver news. Seems far from dead to me.
I don’t think it’s dead, it’s just not as “popular” so to speak, now
Heh. I’ve found and read this article via RSS reader. :)
The problem with mainstream acceptance of RSS lies in the fact that media doesn’t support it, because it separates content from formatting, which means “the source.” Hence, no publicity. In my view, there is something seriously wrong with any news person who doesn’t use RSS, a total disregard for reality in the midst of sea changes to the industry. Sadly, however, this is the norm.
RIP RSS…Oh how I never really used you :-(
http://www.runtobefit.wordpress.com
How did I miss this assassination? RSS? What’s that?
Congrats on being Freshly Pressed!
Kathy
I read the original Camen article, and was very surprised at the browser focus – I’ve always used My Yahoo, and of course there are other online ways to read the RSS feeds in a uniform layout from any browser on any machine. I’ve never even looked at what FireFox and Chrome do with RSS feeds.
I agree with other commenters that the rss discussion came about as a “Firefox” issue, but I think that there’s a bigger point that most people are missing. I am a blogger and consequently am interested in a fair amount of content from other blogs-I recognize that I’m probably not reflective of the average content consumer. Rather than subscribe to a ton of e-newsletters, or trying to catch posts via Twitter, I use Netvibes to pull the rss feeds into a single, dynamic web page-it saves me a ton of time and I love it. I don’t think it’s relevant how many people are using web browsers to manage rss feeds because I think there’s a tremendous network of people out there using sites like netvibes, alltop, pageflakes and others to consume their content via rss feed. I don’t think that rss feeds will vanish, but like some of the other commenters, I think it will evolve. Thanks for sharing this post!
Great food for thought here … I’ve heard rumors of the death of RSS as well, and I do believe they’re greatly exaggerated! ;)
I think Camen has some points, but RSS isn’t the solution to general web-browsing. I used netvibes religiously as my RSS reader for a few months and then I realized that RSS wasn’t exposing me to the content that I wanted. So for some sites I use RSS and the rest I regularly check: your post I found by Morning Coffee checking into Freshly Pressed. I find more interesting things through identi.ca and Twitter. These three routes serve different purposes: specific sites go to RSS, general news with Morning Coffee and links posted by people I know and share interests with come from identi.ca. As you said, simply a part of the web.
Disclaimer: I am a noob. I am not tech savvy so take this as a comment from the comment man, not a techie.
I work at a newspaper and RSS is vital to our online presence. We use RSS to feed out Twitter, YouTube and Facebook pages with links to our content. I don’t know how much the average online reader uses RSS, but as a part of a web page design I think it is an important option to have readily available.
Crystal
http://www.crystalspins.com
I want to take issue with the comment that web design is like programming.
You do not need, and never needed, RSS or WordPress, or anything — web design isn’t hard, especially with sites like w3schools.com, which will even get you through php and the harder parts.
But really, it’s still like 1995 — the best web sites are simple and well-designed and don’t use all the bells and whistles. Social bookmarking sites are where it’s at, because RSS was always pretty unfiltered.
Just that it’s more work to submit to digg and reddit and stumbleupon in the hopes of some viral success — and work isn’t always the tech-geek’s highest priority…
RSS is not only the pumbling, but also part of the very fabric of content distribution.
So much value and innovation has been added around RSS. We shouldn’t judge RSS just by looking at traditional “RSS readers”, which represent the easiest ways to consume RSS. Look at the presentation layer innovations brought on by FlipBoard or deep personalization innovations that we offer via Eqentia where we insulate the user from manipulating the RSS feed itself while giving full benefits of curation, filtering, re-publishing, social media metrics, etc…
So much innovation has enveloped RSS, it has rendered it invisible. It’s like the “Intel inside”.
RSS better not be dying… it’s how I get all my news! Who wants to jump around to dozens of websites looking for content when you can just as easily tell Google Reader to amalgamate it all for you. I tend to not even bother with sites that don’t let me grap the content in an RSS feed – and don’t get me started about sites that have feeds with noting but a link!
I hope RSS does not die, I learned what it was! Google reader is an excelent tool for getting feeds from all kinds of different blogs/websites. They have an android app for reading on the go, which helps to stay current.
So the web and RSS are being called DOA but the problem is we use these components every day. The truth of the matter is they are not dead but becoming mainstream. Since they are no longer hot and sexy but apart of the daily landscape that makes them dead? Is that what this non-technical person is hearing? George Clooney is a daily part of the landscape but I still find him sexy. Shouldn’t he be dead by this same definition?
I wouldn’t write off anything yet. No matter what your genre be it entertaining people or selling product you need every tool you can get to penetrate and overcome all the noise out there. Ultimately it all comes down to customer loyalty and satisfaction, confidence in your product and service. Without that forget it.
In my experience I found the more genuine and honest you are with customers the higher your chances of success. When customers are talking positive about you the word get’s around.
What I really see right now is a shift is starting to occur. I do believe we are in another tech bubble that is expanding at alarming rates also. When that blows life will go on as it always does but it ain’t going to be pretty. Obviously it was mature company’s that survived say the dot.com bust.
Lastly not everyone has the marketing budgets we had back in the 90′s, but it’s wise to make sure your promotions, ads, and marketing truly live up to the hype. Very important and that’s going to be a key element in this shift we are now experiencing. Part of this shift is a general trend of certain demographics wearing out sort of speak on hyper information overload and the kind of fierce competition for their eye’s and ears that is occurring. Mind share happens but it is at a point were the constant bombardment is producing a numbing effect rather then capturing the hearts and minds of your target market.
My guess is RSS is being rejected mostly by those who haven’t figured out anyway to benefit from it so they are giving it the boot at least in their mind.
My philosophy is if even just one reader or customer is enjoying and benefiting from RSS that is a positive. Besides that it’s free to use. How can that not be a win win?
Well it’s hard man to say it’s totally dead…but I’ll be watching you…as for me 2011 is marked by my new web site:
http://www.hellochichaoua.com/.
I’m not yet sure it’s famous enough as your blog.
Cheers,
Aziz
Well it’s hard man to say it’s totally dead…as for me 2011 is marked by my new web site:
http://www.hellochichaoua.com/.
I’m not yet sure it’s famous enough as your blog.
Cheers,
Aziz
I just use Sage. Supports dragging into the menu of RSS feeds. And I’ve found with blogs, if they’re blogspot just append /atom.xml to the address, or wordpress just append /feed
Exactly, RSS is a technology growing behind the scenes, used for many functions, especially on Facebook, but consumer adoption never happened to the extent we thought. RSS feeds are so convenient and at the same time so many internet users couldn’t figure out the shear simplicity of it.
You know, we’ve seen noting but RSS life. More sign ups via RSS than email hands down. Thanks for the GREAT post!
i rely on rss newsfeeds to let me know what’s going on in the world…i like to see wha’ts going on in the world when i have my morning coffee.
Yeah I agree firefox is the problem, everytime iam on my laptop I have to login to facebook and other cool pages through Chrome or other browsers because firefox won’t let me, to bad because iam used to firefox :)
To be honest, I don’t really mind what TechCrunch or whoever says about RSS. The fact is, I still use Google Reader daily because it gives me the information I want more than reddit, Digg, Facebook or Twitter ever will. Even web applications such as iGoogle rely heavily on RSS to function. RSS has never had as much attention as it has now that it’s “dying”.
Anyway, great article. I got linked here from Digg but am pleased to say this site is added to my feed now.
As Ondrej just said, I have found this article on a FireFox browser through RSS feed too!!
No Ads,no browsing… just plain news headers which interest you at the click of a button!!
May be a negative article should trigger positive interest for other folks…
One thing that you forget or intentionally omit is that a web site nowadays is never static. All web sites are based on scripting and many times also a CMS. A site with only static pages is simply not maintainable and doesn’t provide the expected interaction.
Another thing is that end-users (as in the broad user base) don’t make web sites anymore. They write entries in blogs, on Facebook, on Twitter etc, but they never deal with any technology directly. They are writers rather than programmers.
Irony: Reading this article via an RSS reader.
Great post.
Too much hysteria today.
RSS is now part of the internet fabric, just like the web.
Twitter/Facebook/etc will not replace it, they use it.
In terms of successful technologies, RSS, like HTTP and SMTP, has already won.
RSS feeds are still a handy communication tool to filter real content, whether from a blog feed or keyword search. RSS is dead, long live RSS…
Great post, Mathew. When it comes to RSS I find myself pretty confused. Not as to how it works, but why everyone doesn’t use it. I think it’s awesome (it’s how I found this post). Granted, I was a little late to the party, only finding out what it was a couple years ago, but now that I know it just makes things so much easier. I also don’t see why people find it difficult. Google Reader is so simple to manage.
I don’t even see how twitter can compare to it. Twitter is just a traffic jam of blurbs, lots of which is forgettable. I remember reading some stat that some incredible percentage of tweets never get read (I want to say 98%?)
Like so many great things, RSS strength seems like more of an education issue than anything else and how the knowledge permeates into more users. I’m sure RSS isn’t going anywhere soon and all the better!
I’ve never understood why RSS isn’t more popular. It’s been around a while and isn’t that complicated, and really it’s as much of a game-changer for me as TiVo was.
concider this:
Apps like Flipboard would be far less appealing if RSS didn’t excist. You would only be able to see content within Flipboard that is selectable from the default choices the developers put in. You wouldn’t be able to add your own favrotie sources (‘ RSS-feeds).
RSS isn’t dead. In fact I predict nwspaper companies and other content creators will sell their content via RSS-feeds so that users can enjoy their hogh-quality content for a small price in their favourite app on their favourite device. Rather tan having to use the newspapers app. and the newspaper company will save money buy not having to develop an app on each and every platform/device. They’ll have to invest in just one system whereby they can give their subscribers a unique RSS-feed; either on for all articles or one per category.
One would expect a data/statistic based discussion on the topic. The analysis lacks the depth this subject needs. Basically the feedburner cannot integrate and move FB or Twitter RSS feeds… goo.gl/wAeqF
Dead or Not, I’m still using Google Reader btw
RSS is the backbone of free services such as JournalTOCs which aggregates over 15,000 scholarly journal Tables of Contents http://roddymacleod.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/new-alerts-feature-for-journaltocs-the-free-tables-of-contents-service-for-thousands-of-scholarly-journals/ RSS works in the background, so it is not necessary for anyone to know anything about RSS in order to benefit from JournalTOCs. It is a pity, however, that more Openn Access journals don’t pproduce TOC RSS feeds http://roddymacleod.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/the-benefits-of-rss-tables-of-contents-toc-feeds-for-scholarly-journals/
I think Mozilla missed fully exploiting RRS in Firefox after a great start with LiveBookMarks…
You can fix it like I did with a some small add-ons…
I use Boox with Places Full Tiles and Stay-Open Menu.
RSS nirvana
I find it so ironic to find a story about RSS being dead, when I just signed up for RSS this past week.
Rss is very effective tool for website promotion. I think the search engines are just regulating its reflectivity because it is subject to abuse. Thank you for the post.