The Death of the Feed (what I read and why)

Maybe I'm just old, but my primary source of information is still RSS. I don't get this whole 'death of the feed' thing, are enough people really just visiting a handful of websites each day?

I first started with long folders of bookmarks which I checked rather infrequently, thus missing lots of content. When Firefox first got Live Bookmarks, it was a huge step up. Now it redirects to my Google Reader account, which is another step up (nicer interface, and not dependent on where I am).

Any alternative to feeds will have to be a step up from that convenience for me to use it, especially since feeds are everywhere these days, thanks to standards, libraries, and better connected communities.

But then again, I don't put feeds in the same category as the other services the author mentions. They're just a transport medium for me. I use many of the same services, but often via feeds. I do, however, access most social media via other client software. But that's actually so people's pictures of cats don't fill up my reader. If I'm really interested in a person, I'll add their personal feed to my reader.

Agreed that rss is no longer the only source for what I read. But the concept of feeds lives on. Friends' blogs, techmeme, hn, twitter, facebook, and personalization services can all be consumed as feeds. What has passed is the ability to consume all information available. We are all faced with increasing information overload and must seek out tools and techniques to help filter down and consume information more effectively.

As an example, some news readers offer curated top stories, as well as twitter, hackernews, reddit and facebook feeds in a single interface which is designed for easy visual scanning and efficient consumption. By customizing a news aggregator that offers more than just traditional rss feeds, it is relatively easy to stay on top of a manageable stream of information. Disclosure: I'm a developer at Pulse. http://pulsene.ws

I love getting articles like this in my RSS feed. I agree that RSS hit a wall in terms of adoption, but it's still the most efficient way to read.

I love being told that RSS is dead, and then I visit twitter for a few moments and I am overwhelmed by the retweet/tweet ratio.