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How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds
(openrss.org)
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this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2024
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I still miss Google Reader
And the internet as a whole moving away from RSS feeds in general is also not helpful
The crazy thing is, they had a nascent social network going with Google Reader, populated by people who were engaged and interested in the content. And they threw it all away to chase a Facebook clone, which was doomed anyway.
They could've had basically Reddit if they added a way to have comments in Google reader. Then again, they would've never invested in moderation, so it probably would've turned into a shitheap.
i.e., basically Reddit!
Reddit tricked their own users into doing the moderating, that was their great innovation.
Google+ could have been successful to a degree, in terms of features it was an improvement over Facebook in several ways. The problem was the invite only launch.
The invite period worked for Gmail because it was still interoperable with other email services, and made getting a Gmail address seem exclusive and desirable. Making a walled garden social network invite only, however, just lead to it being empty. Most who did sign up looked around for a few minutes then went back to Facebook.
They just seem to make wacky brain-dead decisions all the time and nobody really understands why they make the decisions they do.
They only thought they moved away from RSS feeds. A whole bunch of the internet is built on Wordpress which publishes an RSS feed by default at website.url/rss or website.url/feed. Which means a shitload of sites are running feeds even if they don't advertise it (or realize it).
Most good podcasts offer an RSS feed too.
Podcasts by definition are all RSS based, but Spotify, Amazon and other VC based distributors are trying to change that with subscription and exclusive content.
Even those are still announced via RSS I believe though.
True. But they did make it more difficult to discover RSS feeds by removing all those features.
The end of reader got me started on reddit .
Got me started on Feedly. Still haven't left, although I'd be surprised if I still had more than a couple of the same feeds from then.
Honestly, yeah I think that's how it worked for me too. Reddit wasn't exactly the same, but depending on how you curated your subreddits, it could fill a similar role.