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Comment by lkrubner | Hacker News Reader

Can you name a single RSS service nowadays that doesn't auto-find the RSS feeds for you? Google Reader, and Netvibes, and Bloglines have all had auto-discovery for many years. (When I wrote a history of RSS back in 2006, most of the services I mention already had auto-discovery: http://www.category4.com/2006/10/24/rss-has-been-damage-by-i... ).

I think sites like PandoDaily.com make the reasonable assumption that you can just paste "http://pandodaily.com/ into your service, and your service will find the feed. I just tried this with my Netvibes account and it worked perfectly.

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There are two issues at hand:

1) Convenience.

2) Conversion rate (from visitor to subscriber).

Not having an RSS icon makes it less convenient for the user and "out of sight, out of mind" guarantees you less subscribers as well.

Why less convenient? Well, consider your workflow:

1) Double click in the URL address bar.

2) Copy.

3) Type in or click on your RSS reader bookmark (e.g., Google Reader).

4) Log in if you haven't already.

5) Click "Add Feed".

6) Paste the URL.

7) Click OK.

I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with it. Just that I find an RSS icon less cumbersome.

If you are a technical blogger, not having an RSS icon means shooting yourself in the foot and providing a disservice to your readers (particularly now that some browsers have stopped autodiscovering feeds and presenting you with their icon in the bar).

Counterpoint: users who don't know/care about RSS will no longer be confused when clicking a prominent icon. RSS has awful UX.

RSS usage is small and the usability is bad, don't expect this trend to change. If you still use RSS, use a browser that integrates it or a plug-in to do the same. Even better than an icon on the site.

> users who don't know/care about RSS will no longer be confused when clicking a prominent icon

Pandodaily is a site about startups. Their audience definitely knows about RSS.

I've just copy pasted http://pandodaily.com/ in Google Reader's subscribe field

and here's what I got: You have subscribed to "Most Odd - Facts of Interest." It discovered http://mostodd.wordpress.com/feed/

very odd indeed...

This seems like a strange bug, but I can not find the pattern. This link is on the page:

http://mostodd.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/pando/

No doubt that plays role. But why?

I was able to recreate your problem with my own Google Reader account. What is truly strange is that this URL is the 16th URL on the page. If you go here:

http://pandodaily.com/

and look at the source, you can see the link to Most Odd is way down the page. This bug would almost make sense if that URL was the first one, but instead Google skipped past 15 other URLs and grabbed the 16th one. (Nor is there an issue of time passing and new material being added to PandoDaily, I did all this checking within a minute.)

I am very surprised that Netvibes gets this right while Google Reader has such an odd bug.

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