> RSS is not dead. It is not mainstream, but it's still a thriving protocol, especially among tech users.
RSS is alive and well and mainstream with podcasts.
Also: how many folks use RSS(-as-protocol) and how many use Atom (RSS-as-feed)?
RSS is alive and well and mainstream with podcasts.
Also: how many folks use RSS(-as-protocol) and how many use Atom (RSS-as-feed)?
What's interesting is that this particular post had been posted by someone on HN before I've shared it anywhere. So it got through RSS right onto the HN front page. This is what I meant with "thriving, especially among tech users".
Like you I tried to figure out how many of those are actual users to have a sense of how many people still use it and the numbers still don't make any sense to me.
That said, what do you think is the benefit of styling an RSS page? The point of the rss is to be consumed via an RSS reader so I don't see the benefit of having styles on a page like that. But maybe there's something I'm missing here.
Instead, you can have a readable page with a message like the one in the post: "This is an RSS feed. Subscribe by copying the URL from the address bar into your newsreader. Visit About Feeds to learn more and get started. It’s free."
Also, and not sure why this is happening, I have the Reeder extension installed on safari and it usually automatically prompts me to open an rss link in the app but it doesn't happen in your case.
I can't even use the button in the browser toolbar to open the feed in the app directly. The only way for me to add it is to manually copy paste the url.
Regarding Reeder, I've included the feed in the markup, so I'm not sure what is going on. I will definitely have a look, thanks for the finding!
I'm not sure which you meant here—is your perspective that RSS is thriving (judging from your traffic) or nearly dead?
There are two very similar English idioms that have opposite meanings: "all but dead" means basically dead, "anything but dead" means not even a little bit dead.
But again, appreciate the correction.
Sure, but I would assume that "RSS is dead" isn't so much about consumer awareness of RSS, but rather about the technology being invisibly supported and used in the infrastructure they make use of (through podcast clients et al) such that content producers still care about publishing through RSS.
Like, if I said "TLS1.0 is dead", I wouldn't be referring to greenfield projects not using it any more; but rather to the fact that the browsers and libraries that invisibly use it (and nothing newer) are themselves not being used by anyone any more — so nobody on the content-delivery end has to think about supporting TLS1.0 clients any more, and can drop any code that was supporting that.
But that's definitely not the case with RSS. There are still many important systems that depend on consuming RSS feeds. So there are people who still need to support RSS. So it's alive.
Spotify (and other big players) are doing their best to end this.
As many as one in four podcast listeners currently use spotify to listen. The growing number of spotify-only podcasts are not available via RSS. Most of the listened-to podcasts may also be available as RSS, but the listeners wouldn't know either way. Spotify's goal is to be the chokepoint for podcasts.
Spotify isn't the only one. The way to make money on podcasts is by being the distribution platform, and by locking people in with non-open standards.
But there are also spotify-only podcasts, which are not distributed to spotify like that, are not available via RSS or any other method but a spotify client.
This is an intentional business move by spotify. They are attempting to change the podcast landscape.
Although googling for recent sources, it looks like there's been some pushback and slight retreat -- looks like their plan wasn't exactly working. Yet. I'm sure they haven't given up yet:
https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/18/23688644/spotify-podcast-...
> After the cancellations and resulting layoffs, members of the Gimlet union blamed Spotify’s exclusivity strategy for disappointing numbers. Although the shows were not behind a paywall (free subscribers to Spotify could access them, as well), they did not enjoy the kind of wide distribution that the shows did before the acquisition. It’s not like they don’t have a big platform — according to a study by Cumulus and Signal Hill, Spotify is tied with YouTube as the most-used podcasting platform. But even then, it only has about one-fifth of the market.
And if you are typical, apparently the gimlet staff were right to be worried that this hurt their numbers!
Of course Spotify has incentive to prioritize you listening in their app, but they can still put ads into the audio feed so it doesn’t matter as much to them. And your state-owned radio is absolutely limiting their audience by not using the accepted standards for podcast content.
I would not be surprised if Spotify themselves get the audio from the source via RSS/Atom.
No doubt the podcast creator may have to create an account and tell Spotify manually (and also on Apple, Google, etc), but once the feed is in their system the creators/producers just need to update things in one place and all the 'distribution points' get the new episode.