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RSS queries
As many of you know I am anti-RSS but I would like to understand the phenomenon better. So I have a few questions for you. What feature in an RSS reader do you not have but long for? What would cause you to switch from one reader to another? Would you ever consider a reader that forced ads on you, bundled up with the delivered post?
Don't worry, we're not planning or even contemplating changes in our RSS feed, I simply would like to learn.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 26, 2008 at 07:43 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
I use Bloglines' beta version and, with the risk of sounding like bad astroturfing, I wouldn't change anything about it.
I like web-based readers because they're always up to date, by definition, and I hate installing software on my machine other than what's necessary. Also, they mean less traffic.
As for ads, it's a deal breaker for me. I know I can always use a open source, no-frills reader so my participation constraint is really high.
Actually, I don't want "features" in my reader. I just want to be able to track changes in 100+ sites without going bonkers.
Posted by: Gabriel at Jun 26, 2008 7:59:11 AM
I use Google Reader, which is a one-stop web site I can go to. I also typically use at least a couple of different computers, as well as the basic web browser on my phone while I'm waiting in line at, say, the post office, so all the various feeds are centrally managed in terms of read/unread status, etc. That sort of thing would be difficult to achieve with a desktop RSS reader, much less one that runs on different OSes.
One thing I would like in Google Reader would be some way to synthesize the same story that appears on multiple feeds, e.g., the same damn cell phone reviewed in the half-dozen tech blogs I look at.
I wouldn't mind ads appearing in the RSS reader as long as they aren't obnoxiously placed. Google Reader is free, and if they want to generate some revenue by sticking some AdWords in there, that's fine by me.
Posted by: cjc at Jun 26, 2008 8:00:05 AM
The only RSS reader I use is Google Reader, largely because it is 1) web-based (making my bookmarks available everywhere to me) and 2) lets me burn through lots of posts just by using my spacebar (it lets me process content without much bother).
However, it won't replace my browser because I like the visual variety and context of viewing discrete web pages. The monotony of viewing the feed gets dull after a while.
If Google imposed ads in some way, and they were more obtrusive than their current implementation in Gmail, I'd use the service less.
I don't know, for RSS to bust out of its ghetto, I think it needs an app or an interface that parses the content and then presents it in a much more appealing, robust way. I know they tried robotic newsreaders at Ananova a long time ago; that isn't the answer. Who knows.
Posted by: Tim at Jun 26, 2008 8:00:15 AM
I use Google Reader. I use it for most of my online reading. I am subscribed to about four or five blogs, and two newspaper 'round up' blogs that mainly publish picks of the best articles from the web. This way I don't get overloaded with too much to read.
The feature I enjoy the most is the ability to scroll through many articles, starring those that I want to read later, and automatically marking everything else as read.
Having an online reader ties in well with my online habits. I can load the reader, check my email, check out my social networking sites and be done in a few minutes whatever computer I'm on. Then I can get away and do other work.
Some of the articles I read have adverts in the feeds, but I ignore them. If I want to contribute to a blog, then I'll buy a book via their Amazon link.
Posted by: Jamie at Jun 26, 2008 8:04:54 AM
I currently use Google Reader and I can't really think of anything that it's lacking now that I really want. My wife an I frequently use it to share stories with each other and I used to really want them to add a feature where we could annotate those stories with out own comments, but they've recently put that in. I guess I'd also like to see someone implement a way to better tag and save certain articles for latter. Google currently allows you to "star" them, but it's a pretty blunt instrument.
As for ads, I think it depends on their obtrusiveness. A lot of the feeds I read include ads of their own at the bottom. These I don't mind really, especially if it means the difference between them including the whole article in the feed instead of just the first paragraph or two.
Posted by: Matt N at Jun 26, 2008 8:05:38 AM
I currently use Google Reader and I can't really think of anything that it's lacking now that I really want. My wife an I frequently use it to share stories with each other and I used to really want them to add a feature where we could annotate those stories with out own comments, but they've recently put that in. I guess I'd also like to see someone implement a way to better tag and save certain articles for latter. Google currently allows you to "star" them, but it's a pretty blunt instrument.
As for ads, I think it depends on their obtrusiveness. A lot of the feeds I read include ads of their own at the bottom. These I don't mind really, especially if it means the difference between them including the whole article in the feed instead of just the first paragraph or two.
Posted by: Matt N at Jun 26, 2008 8:05:44 AM
I wouldn't have a problem with ads in my RSS Reader. What would be great is if Google Reader, what I use, could sort duplicates out of my list. One article shared by three friends, on two shared feeds and in the original feed will show up six times in my reader. Painful.
Posted by: gautam at Jun 26, 2008 8:08:25 AM
I can't imagine what features of a reader would be so great that I would use one with ads when other ones that don't deliver ads are available.
And regarding your dislike of RSS - as it happens MR has the perfect number of posts per day to justify viewing it every day manually instead of using a reader. Other sources have 50+ posts per day and I don't want to scroll around on those manually (and stuff has rolled off the front page in the meantime) and other sources post very infrequently and I don't want to regularly visit only to find nothing new.
Posted by: jeff at Jun 26, 2008 8:09:38 AM
At various points in the past I have used Newsgator, Bloglines and Google Reader. Google Reader is perfectly fine; Bloglines (BETA!) is adequate; Newsgator is a lost cause.
I still use Bloglines to export my blogroll to my blog, which to my knowledge is a feature no other aggregator provides (except Blogolling .com perhaps). If Google Reader were to offer script-based exporting to a blog, then it would be unstoppable.
Other features that some value but I do not are a browser add-in (i.e., direct subscription via IE/Firefox toolbars) and pre-defined subscription buttons to post on one's own blog.
Posted by: KipEsquire at Jun 26, 2008 8:26:39 AM
I use Google Reader. I am unlikely to switch to another service because Google Reader is a part of my www.google.com/ig homepage, which is very convenient - I see the latest ten entries whenever I open Google, which is all the time.
A possible improvement: When I add a new subcription, Google Reader adds all articles available there at the top of the list (although some are very old), which crowds out other, more recent entries. A minor nuisance.
Another possible improvement: For most websites I monitor, it works just fine. But there's one forum that is inactive most of the time but when someone posts, all 30+ regulars feel compelled to comment on it. I'd appreciate it if I could - just for this particular forum - change the settings so that I'd be notified of the first new post only and another notification would arrive only if I have already clicked on the previous one.
Ads - no problem if they were unobtrusive and safe. By the way, my Avast started screaming when I clicked on the link to this post in my Google Reader. It didn't like the current selection of BlogAds.
Posted by: J. at Jun 26, 2008 8:35:46 AM
I'm very curious to learn why you don't like RSS? I scan over 100 feeds/day and do it quickly thanks to RSS. I've tried many readers but keep coming back to my.yahoo.com.
Posted by: Speedmaster at Jun 26, 2008 8:39:50 AM
I've been using various RSS readers since pretty early on, currently using Google Reader because I like the ability to share articles/view friends' shared articles and quickly email articles from the RSS interface. Tyler, did you know that Google Reader includes MR as a suggested feed under their "Thinkers" bundle? That's how I found you! I believe you were bundled with Language Hat, Freakonomics, and Malcolm Gladwell but I could be wrong.
The only feature I could think of that might be useful (although I'm not dying for it) is to have some sort of option with every article that says "Look for comments feed"--that way if you were really interested in a topic, you could subscribe to the comments and have them appear as a subfolder to the original post. There are a few blogs out there where the discussion is the main attraction; I get around this by waiting a day or two to open the article and then read all the comments that have accumulated, but that way I lose the opportunity to chime in if I have something to add.
Posted by: tina at Jun 26, 2008 8:40:25 AM
2 things:
1) Connecting the dots so that all articles about the same subject in a given time period are grouped together and sorted by some order of worth.
2) Viewing comments for articles I care about without seeing them for those i don't.
Highly subjective and therefore next to impossible to implement. I live or die by my feedreader though, it easily saves me an hour or two a day.
Posted by: Jordan Peacock at Jun 26, 2008 8:45:20 AM
An addition: I was originally unimpressed but then I came to appreciate the RSS technology because I procrastinate much less. As a translator, I am always online. When I was translating a relatively boring text and the deadline was still far enough, I just couldn't discipline myself and keep working without lurking at my favorite websites all the time - what if there's something new? Now that a huge part of my online favorites is in my Google Reader, there's no point in checking again and again. Admittedly, there are still enough attractions to distract me - and I for one never hesitate to take a short break and read something interesting unless I am pressed for time. But I really hated wasting my time by visiting those websites just to find nothing new. My productivity improved. Long live RSS. :)
Posted by: J. at Jun 26, 2008 8:45:27 AM
I use Net News Wire which used be pay but is now free. I prefer the better performance of a native application over something web-based like Google Reader. The best analogy is the difference between Outlook or Mail and webmail. Apps are almost always better, in my view, but web-based sevices offer the portability.
1) A feature I long for: Flash/video capability in NNW's built-in browser (which is otherwise excellent).
2) Something that would cause me to switch: An app that reconceptualized RSS reading in a novel way.
3) Ads: Never. I have a free reader that doesn't do that, why would I accept one that did?
Posted by: Tom at Jun 26, 2008 9:01:34 AM
Google Reader is best for now because (1) it stores my reading history in the internet clouds, and (2) it allows search across the content of all and only the blogs that I read.
The features I'd most like to see are these:
(1) The ability to jump to the comments feed for a given post. Also a way to leave comments without going to the webpage.
(2) Better interaction with other social software, especially bookmarking services like del.icio.us. I do not want to have to visit the post's webpage to save it.
(3) The ability to subscribe to authenticated feeds, like the one for Nature's full content. This is not possible with Google Reader.
(4) Automatic completion of all partial- and summary-content feeds. Business models be damned.
(5) Alternatively, I wish Apple would create an RSS reader that has an iTunes-like store for subcribing to pro blogs and magazines for small fees.
(6) No ads ever; they are bad for the soul.
(7) Links to other blog entries should be followed inside of the reader and be displayed as just another post. I realize that is not what RSS is for, but I don't care.
General idea: Webpages rely too much on the printed-page metaphor, and we need to move beyond that. RSS is not perfect but it correctly emphasizes the primacy of content.
Posted by: Lee Beck at Jun 26, 2008 9:06:40 AM
I use Google Reader. I subscribe to a lot of blogs, with turnover depending on my interests and blog quality, and set a roughly fixed reading time. I scan headlines for 5-10 minutes either skipping, reading short articles, or putting articles that are more substantive or where I want the comments in a background tab.
Features I would like: Statistical scoring at the single article level. The nearest I've seem was gnus scoring for nntp.
Switching feature: Speed of scanning and reading. Google Reader had excellent 100% keyboard driven support and, unlike, bloglines, wasn't buggy.
Feeds with ads: Text would be fine. Anything animated or similarly distracting would be cause for unsubscribing.
Posted by: jonm at Jun 26, 2008 9:07:28 AM
RSS is a truly important technology that helps information find its audience, making the whole information ecosystem more efficient. I'm a Google Reader user, typically using it inside it's own dedicated application using Mozilla Prism. My two top wishes are 1) more control over when feeds refresh, 2) support for authenticated feeds.
I also depend on Yahoo Pipes to let me remix my feeds or scrape pages to generate feeds.
I'm not against ads per se, but I believe that there is A LOT of progress to be made in improving them. Just knowing what content a user finds interesting in a reader is probably an outstanding way to pitch to them. If publishers could opt-in to allow Google to place discreet, well designed (haven't seen that yet), targeted ads and share the revenue, that would be interesting.
Now that I think of it, here's another wish for RSS technology—that Feedburner would magically convert any stylesheets into inline CSS for the feed.
Posted by: Marsh Gardiner at Jun 26, 2008 9:14:42 AM
Google Reader. The only thing I would change is to have some way to mix private and public RSS feeds. I'm not sure that an RSS feed can be secured, but if so, I would like to have Google Reader be able to have private subscriptions.
Posted by: Cobb at Jun 26, 2008 9:15:41 AM
Having just made my first comment on MR (longtime lurker), there are three things I'd recommend to make the commenting more pleasant. 1) support for OpenID, 2) a larger textarea when previewing your comment, and 3) having an extra step for a captcha is clunky.
I'd be remiss if I didn't thank MR for expanding my mind a little bit each day—fantastic stuff.
Posted by: Marsh Gardiner at Jun 26, 2008 9:19:10 AM
I use NetNewsWire and the Newsgator site for RSS.
One feature I would love to have is some 'discovery' mode. RSS is great for plowing through the things I know I want to look at, but lacks the discovery aspect of surfing sites. A reader that could provide more information than simply the body of an article would be exciting. Who is discussing the article, what other sites does this site link to regularly, who disagrees with this article, etc, etc.
In terms of switching readers, I need 1. a native desktop client 2. syncing with an online client 3. a great UI. Any reader which could give me more background/social information along with an article (as described in my 'one feature') could get me to switch, provided it had my other required features, and didn't sacrifice my speed in reading and using the app for the new feature.
As far as ads go, it doesn't bother me as long as it is done tastefully and securely -- no adware or ads that make noise by default (any site that does this gets an immediate close window no matter how good the content).
Posted by: John at Jun 26, 2008 9:26:18 AM
I use Google Reader. I switched to it after being a long-time (relatively) user of Bloglines. I switched because it was easier to organize and share my favorite posts, mostly because of the gmail tie-in.
I would switch away from Google Reader if they made it easy to export and save my shared/starred items into some sort of reasonable storage format. I'd like the options of XML, CSV and clean HTML.
I'm also looking for a Firefox extension that lets me save a PDF of a webpage in one click or by selected area.
The big plus of RSS/ATOM, to me, is that I don't have to see all these different ugly blogs. Very few blogs are aesthetically appealing(see this one for what I mean: http://www.b-list.org/weblog/2008/jun/15/minimal/ ).
Posted by: grant at Jun 26, 2008 9:30:51 AM
Google reader... follow about 150 feeds.
Missing feature: Authenticated feeds (feeds that need a username/password)
Real missing feature: being able to read my mail in the Google Reader interface. The "river of news" style of reading that Google Reader does so well allows me to read an amazing amount of material every day.
Ads: If they are web-based, I'm going to filter them out... like I've done since 1998.
Posted by: Mark Denovich at Jun 26, 2008 9:40:53 AM
Google Reader. They just improved their iGoogle Gadget, but it still doesn't let me sort by, say, blog. And I agree with the masses above -- it's a huge time-saver.
Posted by: Dan Lewis at Jun 26, 2008 9:43:06 AM
I just started using RSS and Google Reader relatively recently, and I very much agree with all the comments about it making scanning lots of headlines much easier.
I don't have any burning feature requirements. I'd like less duplicate headlines from the NYT and more robust tagging. I can't think of a likely scenario that would cause me to change readers since I don't have any known unmet needs or any particular pain points with the current one.
Also, some of the NYT listings already include little text ads. I don't particularly mind, nor do I pay attention to them. I don't care in principle about the ads, as long as I can easily ignore them.
Posted by: Greg at Jun 26, 2008 9:43:50 AM
