Things like the death of Google Reader and web browsers making it harder or even disabling subscriptions to websites via RSS were a huge deal. Allegedly all of that was because RSS lost momentum.
People like me had to resort to use things like Feedly, but frankly it is not the same. I for one dream about the resurgence of RSS and making the web again a little less corporation-in-the-middle.
I have never seen someone under about 20 using RSS (and probably 90% of that age group has never heard of it). They all live in chat apps and algorithmic feeds :(
I couldn't imagine my RSS reader displaying stories that it thinks I'd like (and not all, in chronological order). There's a reason I curate my feeds—I want to see the content in each of them!
As well as the fact that most of the time, the actual content of the article is less interesting than the discussion it starts in the comments. I imagine most people checking reddit or HN are not there to read a long post but instead looking to discuss various opinions in the comments which RSS does not support.
RSS is for the long tail of blogs that don't post very frequently, but when they do, its worth your while.
The ideal entry in my RSS feed is one that has new addition once per week or less. This way, I can follow a very wide array of people without getting overwhelmed, nor having to miss if their post don't make it to HN front.
That's why RSS is still important, and why RSS feeds should not be delivered via Email.
How do you find those?
These days there are few awesome lists or the like for curated, sorted and tagged personal blogs too. Its a great time to start with RSS.
It's possible that you're reading the wrong blogs.
Im under 19 , i use rss daily for a lot of things from reading blogs to sending alerts about new updates in services me and my friends host.
I wish more people would join us outside the walled gardens, but I also don't think these tools will die so long as there's people like us that are passionate about staying outside the walled gardens.
I just checked wikipedia and it is coming up on a decade since v3 was started and yet no major network supports it. And v3 was only the bare minimum required to modernize IRC and misses so many other important features people demand like inline images/files and a mobile friendly protocol.
Of course it will never be dead in the sense that literally no one uses it. Almost nothing ever dies that way.