I have been using RSS daily for more than 20 years and I have no clue what the difference is between RSS and a JSON feed, and whether or why I should pick one over the other. This kind of thing is why more people do not use RSS.

@MitchWagner Atom/JSON = RSS reinvented by people who think Dave Winer is a flake.

@ffmike He may well be but does that mean RSS is flawed in ways that Atom or JSON correct?

@MitchWagner If you’re a standards purist, then yeah, Atom feeds are probably more correct.

In practice as a user and consumer of both I very seldom see any difference. Readers have to support both as a matter of necessity.

There was a time when I’d get involved with these battles over what is Wrong on the Internet. I’m quite happy that time is long past.

@MitchWagner 💯 and it gets worse. I keep any and all feeds that I know about of my sites in a folder so I can see if anything breaks .. for John.philpin I have three ..

The confusion is worse when it comes to feed aggregation .. eg in feedland Dave tells you how many others in his world are subscribed to a particular feed … I am one of a couple that follow daring fireball for example .. elsewhere there are 60 or so followers .. not even @dave can aggregate this stuff .. and he invented RSS❗️

@MitchWagner I am interested in it and what @dave is doing with it - and future possibilities.

In all honesty I do not like the UI side - but for a technologist I don’t believe that is - or at least should be an issue - and one day Claude and I will sit down and have a better look - just no time that goes that far down the priority list.

That said friend of many and author of 🔗 The WONDERFUL Micro Blog Glossary Plugin Mr. @AndySylvester has just announced that he has newly found spare time for ‘interesting projects’ - so maybe we can explore this when we next talk .. Andy❓

Why is it different? Because to me - it is not just a reader - it provides an informed view of who is reading the feeds - so you can get a sense of popularity of blogs and maybe - with some jiggery - a sense of authoritative blogs - which I don’t see high on Dave’s dev list - but I can visualise - but first job - a much improved interface is needed.

(Coincidentally - this also segues into a product that PHI⑊PIN is developing and will shortly be making an appearance on a few sites down here in New Zealand - more of that to come in future missives.

@JohnPhilpin I recently switched from Inoreader to Newsblur. I’ve had a love-hate relationship with Inoreader for a long time and I’ve tried Newsblur before but it did not stick.

@JohnPhilpin As a fellow person who uses Feedland, John, I think you touched on the important point. Feedland is as much about building and managing RSS subscriptions. For me a simple thing as knowing the last date something was added to a feed is useful. I actual prefer Dave’s earlier RSS aggregator, River5, because it is a simple reverse chronological presentation of the latest feed updates. It works for me because I only use RSS aggregators to triage and find items to read, I do my reading in Readwise Reader.