Comments on: Why RSS is “Broken”

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

uh, no…this is how RSS should be explained…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

You can’t bring out a new version of RSS. It’s stuck at 2.0 by harvard.

You can produce customised RSS and you have to do this through a programming language – but why not produce several RSS feeds for customisation (controlled customisation).

and you i’m british – ergo the s instead of the z.

By: till

till — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This post should be entitled, “What RSS is not”. The shortcomings you listed are strictly speaking not relevant in this area – RSS: Really Simple Syndication. Not, Really Simple Profiling And (Also) Syndication (RSPAAS).

And I am glad that all this data is not included. In my opinion, e.g. Google knows already too much about us – combine data from Gmail, Analytics, Feedburner and the Toolbar and you got one comprehensive profile.

By: jm

jm — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

it is impossible to explain RSS to my mother!

By: centernetworks

centernetworks — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Ich verstehe nicht.

By: centernetworks

centernetworks — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

That's why I put "broken" in quotes.

By: till

till — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

You mean, “evolve”, not evolve. :)

By: centernetworks

centernetworks — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

No need for name calling here, it's a friendly place. I guess the Web was created with the intent to be the marketing machine it is? Yea, that's right, I forgot.

RSS is a marketing tool today - at its most basic explanation RSS is about getting content from a to b and thereby you are marketing it to b.

By: centernetworks

centernetworks — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

JM - check this - it's by Stephanie who decoded RSS and explains it the way Oprah would.

http://cravingideas.blogs.com/backinskinnyjeans/2006/09/how_to_explain_.html

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

those aren’t bugs, those are features of RSS!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

“broken” and “makes it hard for me to stuff it full of ads and get personal information from viewers” are two very different things. that’s like saying that paper-back books are “broken” because they can’t scan the drivers licenses of everyone reading them. i’m sure that at some point in time ATOM will evolve to allow hosts to gather more data on their users, but as most people are using google reader, bloglines, etc., it’s not a very data-rich avenue to begin with. and keep in mind that the higher your barrier to entry (in this case, how much personal information is required), the lower your readership – if i went to see a movie and was asked for my SSN, i’d pick another theater.

By: till

till — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The evolution of RSS would more likely be on the user-side and also for the user. I can hardly call it evolution when all of the sudden RSS becomes a tool to profile the readers. :)

I guess it’s hard to make money in Web 2.0. But you don’t always have to. I see how people need to make money to pay rent, food etc., but there gotta be other ways.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

No, I don’t think I should. Or perhaps something, but not my demographic data. Because you benefit from my RSS subscription too. It has to be a pretty damn good blog for me to keep reading it without having a low cost subscription option (i.e. ‘click and I can watch it’) because I have better things to do than open up a dozen sites to see if they updated today with an article which interests me.

If there is no RSS feed, I’ll click through, read a few stories, forget about the site, remember in a month, rinse, repeat. If I have to go through the faff of filling in another form, verifying my email once more, odds are I won’t unless I think you’re very very good.

If you do want to offer personalised feeds, then there is already the (admittedly poorly supported) option for things such as http authentication to access feeds. But again, this is poor supported despite being in the standard from the start. How long do think it might take for your much more extensive changes to reach a useful level of support?

A second option is even simpler, as they do over at InfoQ (and I am sure many other sites), when you subscribe, you get a personal feed url like feeds.rss?token=some_string_here . That can be pasted into any feedreader, is unique and (more or less) private.

In addition, the feed you offer tells me nothing the site doesn’t. While the site is publicly accessible, nothing stops me scripting a simple scrapper to produce my own feed anyway …

Which was a far longer comment than I first intended, but these things happen.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I would rather have no access to information in a way I’d have to surrender my anonymity.
As far as I know more than 99% of internet users don’t buy online, I do my best to stay in this 99% and I’m surely not a by-impulse buyer. I avoid doing business with people and firms who advertise by mail or e-mail, as I find it to be very inappropriate.
People have right to privacy, even if marketers say no.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

YOU are an IDIOT.

RSS is NOT and never had been a marketing vehicle and the second it becomes one, it will die a thousand deaths and be replaced by another technology.

Get this into your thick, neandertahl-like marketing skull… people *HATE* marketing, and no technology should be subverted by the likes of you.