👓 The Case for RSS | MacSparky

Read The Case for RSS by David Sparks (MacSparky)
If you are thinking about using RSS, I have a little advice. Be wary feed inflation. RSS is so easy to implement that it's a slippery slope between having RSS feeds for just a few websites and instead of having RSS feeds for hundreds of websites. If you’re not careful, every time you open your RSS reader, there will be 1,000 unread articles waiting for you, which completely defeats the purpose of using RSS. The trick to using RSS is to be brutal with your subscriptions. I think the key is looking for websites with high signal and low noise. Sites that publish one or two articles a day (or even one to two articles a week) but make them good articles are much more valuable and RSS feed than sites that published 30 articles a day.

Published by

Chris Aldrich

I'm a biomedical and electrical engineer with interests in information theory, complexity, evolution, genetics, signal processing, IndieWeb, theoretical mathematics, and big history. I'm also a talent manager-producer-publisher in the entertainment industry with expertise in representation, distribution, finance, production, content delivery, and new media.

One thought on “👓 The Case for RSS | MacSparky”

  1. “be brutal with your subscriptions”. Well that inspired to me to look at my feeds list. I’d forgotten Tiny Tiny RSS has a list of inactive feeds. I’ve deleted all feeds that haven’t posted in over 6 months (except Steve Gibson’s blog, because Steve is Steve and when he posts it will be worth the wait!), which got rid of 30. Also looked at the ‘feeds with errors’ list, and got rid of another 5 that had errors that seemed terminal. Feels good to have had a clearout.

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