Comments on: The Death Throes Of Feed Subscriptions

By: the news empire

the news empire — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 04:22:46 +0000

Thanks for sharing

By: sbspalding

sbspalding — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 04:47:45 +0000

Sometimes I wonder what the next 5 years will look like. There are a few technologies out there that will survive, but I think a lot of what we use today is “toy tech” and will die as soon as we realize what we were trying to use it for in the first place.

By: Maggy Young

Maggy Young — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 04:02:46 +0000

Think you're talking about the inevitable. A lot of technologies are going to be interim technologies, which doesn't have to mean they die out, but just become less used. Reminds me of a commentt you made re. decline in importance of microsoft – 'What happened – time happened'. Sort of inevitable isn't it ?

By: Svetlana Gladkova

Svetlana Gladkova — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:15:03 +0000

Steve, you are right on spot with this post, definitely – it is much more important if people actually engage with your content then the mere subscription counts. I know from experience that what boosts subscription numbers dramatically for any major blog is to be included as a default one in a batch for some popular feed reader. So I rarely ever trust the huge figures because I know that only a fraction of those “subscribers” are actually engaged in the content created by the blogger.

By: sbspalding

sbspalding — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 05:37:32 +0000

Which is what I pointed out. The technology is thriving (RSS as a platform). What I am calling into question is whether people are using RSS feed readers and subscribing to as many feeds as they once did.

By: robzand

robzand — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 03:59:47 +0000

i challenge the notion the RSS is of decreased importance. RSS is content distribution. friendfeed is primarily content redistribution. the latter is predicated on the former. without RSS your friendfeed will diminish

By: Kristin

Kristin — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 03:39:50 +0000

I like the idea of “human mediated news.”

By: Jolin

Jolin — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 20:55:36 +0000

The internet makes the market much more narrow and duplicate contents.

By: KnightKnetwork

KnightKnetwork — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 20:28:48 +0000

RSS is just another tool in the toolbox, it's not going anywhere. I use my RSS subscriptions for blogs I don't want to miss a post on, the rest go to friendfeed or some other tracking service. RSS isn't a mainstream technology but it's still a useful one and with services like Toluu pumping new life into it I think we'll see continued (if slow) growth instead of a death spiral. I think it's such a useful tool i joined the RSS Day movement this year and started http://RSSDay.info to promote it.