Kill the Newsletter: Convert email newsletters into Atom feeds | Hacker News Reader

Kill the Newsletter: Convert email newsletters into Atom feeds

kill-the-newsletter.com

114 pointsgoranmoomin52 comments

I like this service and use it myself. But I do find one thing unsettling about it: I run a blog that offers email subscriptions, but also provide direct RSS feeds (with prominent links!). For reasons I don't understand, large numbers of people subscribe using kill-the-newsletter. Which makes me sad, because then they don't get real tables, can't see post-publication corrections, don't get vector graphics, etc.

Make a blog post about it

I still don't get how my substack newsletter got such a success but the RSS got so little love.

It's less clutter. No string attached. Formatting is better.

And yet.

Ignorance? I sub to several substacks via email, and just today (just now, from you) learned that the platform supports RSS feeds :) Off to substack I go! It’s become overwhelming.

Yeah RSS is the least promoted web feature of the century.

Even youtube channels have rss, and it's advertised... nowhere.

I see the same thing! A little tempted to email them sometimes with "you know there's a real RSS feed..."

I don't feel like I present the email option with any more prominence either. Interesting user behavior.

Ahah same. I literally just posted another comment here saying the same. I even made a PSA on my blog to let them know and people keep doing it.

I really don’t get it. If you want an RSS just use that.

But i guess people are used to not have an RSS available so they don’t even bother checking.

I run a paid RSS-to-Email service and I have customers who subscribe to get kill-the-newsletter RSS feeds delivered to them via email.

At some point I just have to assume that people have motives and not worry about it.

(In the case of newsletters → feed → email it may be avoiding giving our your email address?)

Periodically send out a newsletter targeting kill-the-newsletter email addresses to announce the "new" RSS feed support.

I check for an RSS feed, and if it does not exist, subscribe via KTN.

It would be awesome if KTN provided an easy way to upgrade/redirect at KTN feed to an original feed, if one exists. I'm not sure how conveniently redirects would be handled by RSS clients...

Err, the page doesn't explain why I would want to do this. What's the advantage of Atom, which can be read on a web page or a standalone client, versus email, which can be read on a web page or a standalone client?

I know some advantages of email:

* I already have an email reader that I use every day.

* The newsletter was designed for email, so it'll probably look better.

But what do I get by going with Atom?

Some blogs only make themselves accessible via email. This service is a way to get those blog posts in your feed reader.

Well, Atom has been around possibly longer than you've been alive. You can use it in any Atom/RSS reader. These were the OG blog syndication tools, they're platform/company independent and provide a standard interface. Atom was huge back in the webcomics era. You can use an Atom/RSS feed to build your own google news page, effectively, and carry/sync it between devices. I haven't used it in forever, but 15 years ago most every site offered feeds for both their entire site, and main sections

Atom was invented in 2005. I think the average user here is likely able to at least go to the bar and buy a drink. Email was invented in 1971; depending on how sloppy you want to be, that is the better part of a century ago.

that is a point for email.

Thank you for thinking I'm not in my late 40s! I love RSS/Atom, I'm just wondering why I'd use this instead of email. I get that it's different, what I was asking was: what are the advantages of taking a native email newsletter and syndicating it through Atom instead, given that it the newsletter was made to be consumed via email, and everybody already has an email client?

> What's the advantage of Atom, which can be read on a web page or a standalone client, versus email, which can be read on a web page or a standalone client?

I find RSS/Atom more a-sync while e-mail tends to be more interrupt-driver (even with filters and folders (or *hawk*spit* Gmail's tags)).

> But what do I get by going with Atom?

Not having your e-mail address yet one more database?

I like the separation of concerns. If I'm looking to read some blogs/newsletters/etc., I pull up my feed reader (which is only on my computer, not carried around everywhere on my phone). If I'm trying to communicate with someone, I'll use email (which is on my phone, so I can respond to an email while I'm out and about).

One main advantage is that I would never sign up for an email newsletter - I don’t want more junk in my inbox.

I would, however, subscribe to an RSS feed.

It should also be mentioned that you can self-host this: https://github.com/leafac/kill-the-newsletter

One very interesting thing about this is:

https://github.com/radically-straightforward/radically-strai...

  import server from "@radically-straightforward/server";
  import * as serverTypes from "@radically-straightforward/server";
  import sql, { Database } from "@radically-straightforward/sqlite";
  import html, { HTML } from "@radically-straightforward/html";
  import css from "@radically-straightforward/css";
  import javascript from "@radically-straightforward/javascript";
  import * as utilities from "@radically-straightforward/utilities";
  import * as node from "@radically-straightforward/node";
  import caddyfile from "@radically-straightforward/caddy";
  import * as caddy from "@radically-straightforward/caddy";

I subscribe to Readwise, their Reader portion is awesome in that I can subscribe to RSS feeds, but it also gives you a feed email (and a library email, which would be like Instapaper) that you can subscribe to newsletters with and they go directly into your feed reader as an item to be read.

Worth it imo, to just have it all in one place.

Suggestion: Currently the local part of the email and the management URL are the same. They should be different (and the URL should be treated as a secret).

Imagine I'm a mischievous newsletter publisher who doesn't like the idea for some reason: What prevents me from finding all subscribers with XYZ@kill-the-newsletter.com addresses, and then deleting all of them by visiting https://kill-the-newsletter.com/feeds/XYZ, or reading all other newsletters they are subscribed to by checking out https://kill-the-newsletter.com/feeds/XYZ.xml ?

And if you want to go full circle, you can use rss2email[0] to manage your RSS feeds in your favorite email client. Yes, even gmail.

rss2email was originally written by Aaron Swartz.

[0] https://github.com/rss2email/rss2email

Ha, I did a PoC of this awhile back using lambda and SES and I was pleasantly surprised that it was relatively easy to do and worked pretty nicely, but eventually I went back to just reading all my newsletters (and unsubscribing from most of them...) in my email client rather than using a feed reader, so I decided it might not really make sense as a product.

I had the thought that maybe it would actually be neat to go the other direction, to be able to subscribe to feeds, but have new posts emailed like newsletters, but I never tried that out.

It's a great idea, though take a look if any newsletters you want to subscribe to offer their own feed as it's more likely to be resilient in the long term (sometimes services like this get bumped off of lists due to inactivity or bounces). I know Substack has RSS for all of theirs (whatever.substack.com/feed) as do all of my own ones (with a /rss suffix).

I have been using a similar service from a different provider (feedbin) and can vouch for the usefulness of this approach.

For a time, I used Android. The absence of a decent RSS reader on android made me jump back to iOS. My smartphone OS choice came down to being able to read newsletters as feeds.

Good idea, tho personally I've never encountered a newsletter that didn't have a feed for my RSS reader (Feedbro). Usually people use some web platform that happens to also email, rather than composing them in email

If you're using Thunderbird, you can have it recognize the newsletter emails and send them somewhere for processing, probably including ad removal.

Otoh: Sounds like good use for a dynamic email. Imagine sending links to full articles. The links open the content of the newsletter in the email.

I love the existence of both this and https://blogtrottr.com/.

If you're going around the email to get the content, how will these marketers be able to market to you or sell your email to a third party?

You know what’s funny? I have a newsletter that’s also available as a dedicated RSS feed. People still sign up to the newsletter with a email-to-rss service.

I even wrote a PSA on my blog to let them know they don’t have to do it and yet they do it anyway. I guess some people just find it convenient.

Inoreader let's you subscribe to email newsletters and have them show up in your reader

One week everyone wants email turned into rss, and the next rss into email

Hard no. When this services burst, every subscription made through it will die as well. Remember Stoop[1], “a newsletter app” which did the same trick? It's abandoned and stoped working a couple months ago.

[1] https://stoopinbox.com/

It's open source[0], you can just self-host it

[0] https://github.com/leafac/kill-the-newsletter

So what, if it dies I can just re-subscribe to the list of dead feeds by going to the websites.

Stoop inbox is still working fine, I have been receiving newsletters and also able to subscribe with stoop ID. Maybe it stopped signing up new users.

Make podcast of the newsletters

That’s what I really want

Yes! Let's make email human again.

haha

all of these ideas that sound cool to a very techy type person, but "moms" are not going to do this. they enjoy getting these ads in their inbox. just because some techy type wants something does not mean the general masses wants the same thing.

this is already way more complicated than "moms" want to do: generate a new email, use that email in this new form, get a feed reader (wtf is that mom says). while this is perfectly fine for power users, it just makes me smile how often we forget there are a far larger number of non-power users that are out there

This might have worked before Google killed Reader when personal blogs ruled the Internet, but nothing has come along to fill that void.

Also, a lot of rss feeds now only offer the title of the post/article. I still need to visit the pages anyway to get to the content. With a newsletter, i receive a bit of context around the content as well.

There are feed readers that will load the pages when you click on the title

While true, it adds even more uncertainty for non-technical users.

I'm not sure I understand what you (and others in this thread) are getting at.

Non-technical users can simply subscribe to the newsletter with their email address. If they don't understand what this project is about, they probably don't need and don't want it.

Users that prefer RSS over email use kill-the-newsletter for outlets that don't offer RSS.

i was (badly) explaining why most people prefer the newsletter format.

And from what i've read, even the technical users prefer it most of the time.

This doesn't appear to be a product marketed to "moms." But it also isn't clear how it works at all for a "power user" like me.

If you're not targeting "moms", then you're not going to come anywhere near killing the newsletter. You probably won't even give it merely a flesh wound it. Probably closer to just a scratch.

So who is it marketed towards with a title of Kill The Newsletter?

Not to mention, marketing isn't going to do this. I bet email more push notification system vs Atom feed that is just hanging out waiting for attention gets more engagement.

Yeah, feeds sound cool except there are too damn many of them.

I have to monitor my phone, Teams, Slack, email, and some other bespoke notification channel my employer invented. It's too much, I don't want more. As much as possible I try to get stuff pushed into email, as once it's there I can interact with the message in the same way, no matter the source.

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