Hacker News Reader

Comment by e3bc54b2 | Hacker News Reader

Blogs and websites that generate lots of content are akin to News. You don't subscribe to them, and have HN to let you know of something important happens.

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.

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I guess the reinvented solution for this use case is email newsletters, that substack and the like have popularized recently. Most people have an email client, no matter how grudgingly.

Email... defeats half the purpose of RSS. With RSS, you control what you want to receive and when. Its a pull mechanism. With email, it becomes push and then it gets abused. Remember when smartphone notifications were actual notifications with useful alert/content? Nowadays they are just another advertisement delivery channel.

That's why RSS is still important, and why RSS feeds should not be delivered via Email.

Guess what? Substack supports RSS. Every substack has a feed.

> RSS is for the long tail of blogs that don't post very frequently, but when they do, its worth your while.

How do you find those?

Its organic discovery. Some I come across in HN discussions. Some I find while googling stuff. Since my interests aren't mainstream, most of the blogs I come across this way are interesting to me and I subscribe.

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.

From my own experience: search for blogs of favorite writers, observe aggregate sites like Hacker News and Reddit for authors with a style that resonates with you (subreddits of niche topics are often surprisingly rich in a good content), search for niche topics that are of interest to you, ask friends about any interesting content.

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