Schrödinger's RSS

RSS lives on in podcasting. It’s a remnant of the Indie-Web which persisted, and is thriving. Could long-form textual content ever see that same sort of popularity? Or are those days behind us?

Saadia goes on to ask a few friends if they use RSS. The answer is no.

I used RSS, of course, back in the day. But stopped when Google killed it. Of course they didn’t really kill it, but they kind of did.

Only recently did I pick it up again. Thanks to the prodding of two friends. Seems I do best when two independent sources recommend something.

The change for me was the Reeder app. It’s a bit weird, but it’s an evolution of an old app I used back in the day. It’s beautiful, well designed, and kind of lets articles flow past like Twitter of old. I bookmark the ones I want to catch up on later, and use those as inspiration for posts here.

I love it. I’m hooked again.

It was the technology, but the product, that pulled me back in.

Recently I recommended a podcast to a friend. He asked how he could listen to it. If I’d mentioned a YouTube channel he would have found it right away. In fact I almost put my podcast on YouTube that night.

Instead I had to explain to him that his phone came with an app.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had this issue. Having to ask someone to use a new app as part of their workflow just to get into a form of media—well it’s a lot to ask. Same with RSS. It’s weird, requires new work flows, and frankly is a bit esoteric.

But.. thanks to giving up social media. I find myself wanting deeply to connect with people and hear from real humans. Reeder has solved that. If you’re curious, grab it and snag a few blogs. I’d be happy to share my OMPL file if you want (gah, another weird term!).

Via Digging for Fire.