Iām struggling with RSS feeds. I want to read what everyone is writing beyond their microblogs, but I donāt want to re-read whatās posted here. Has anyone found a solution? I just avoid Feedbin now because itās overwhelming.
Micro.blog
@Aleen Thatās a good point. Maybe I should have a posts only feed.
@Aleen As far as feed readers go I use The Okd Reader.
@Aleen I only add micro blogs that frequently write full blog posts to my RSS feed. I think of RSS as almost entirely a ālong readsā place.
@khurt the defaults work great!
@manton I'd love to see this as the MVP of categories. Start with two categories that are not user set, but added by MB that separates micro and macro posts.
@jsonbecker That's a really good idea.
@manton You can have a look at how I do it, if you'd like: patdryburgh.com/subscribe...
@Aleen a channel in feedbin? But I hear you ... it aināt easy
@chrislopez You know... I usually laugh when people call it macro-blogging, but that might actually be a good fit here. Hmm.
@manton @chrislopez That has my vote.
@manton Itās tricky, because is it ālong postsā or even āfull postsā, really? Seems to me what we really mean is ātitle-less postsā, but even that isā¦ squishy.
Back when Tumblr first came out, one of its distinguishing features to me was that titles were optional, regardless of post length. To me, it made it feel a bit more like a diary, mixed with content sharing/remixing.
Of my subscribers, 4% subscribe to just the full posts feed, 0% to the microblog feed, and the rest to the feed with all posts.
From what I recall, the discussion of multiple feeds stems from the desire users have to not have to read the same thing in two places, once in an RSS reader and once again in their Micro.blog feed. The same complaint was made when Twitter came around, and most people decided to give up RSS and stick with just their Twitter feed. In my opinion, this was a factor in publications giving up their agency to Twitter.
What if instead of solving this problem via the publication side, you solve it from the consumption side? Instead of limiting where Iāll read content to one of two places, you could find a way to let me read all of the content I want to read in one place?
What if Micro.blog was where I could read everything? But instead of forcing publications to publish here, you allow users to add feeds from the publications they want to read to appear in their Micro.blog feed.
Make it kind of a Micro.internet feed.
That way, you get the best of all worlds. You have super simple publishing and reading on an open platform.
If you donāt do it, I might build a Micro.blog + RSS reader myself š
@rosskimes Itās too early to worry about that. My guess is that the problem most Micro.blog users have is not an overwhelming amount of content to read and sift through. Get it to where it does the job of simply consolidating, first, then iterate as needed.
I would personally love to just be able to upload my OPML file and have my RSS and Micro.blog posts appear in one stream. Use favicons or apple-touch-icons to start, and open links in an in-app browser. MVP.
@manton And narrowing the focus was absolutely the right idea. Still might be. It just seemed to me that jumping to the multiple-feeds solution was a bit hasty, though I realize youāve probably had the thought for a long time.
Of course, you cannot satisfy everyone all the time, nor should your users expect you too. What youāve done is build a wonderful platform and have exhibited, here and elsewhere, a desire to see others build on what youāve created. I think thatās to be commended and acted upon (a key reason why Iām working on building Jekyll themes is the hope that one day youāll need some more options š).
I just wish I had the technical fortitude to make the Micro.rss idea happen myself in a reasonable amount of time. What I could hack together in a year, you could probably do in your sleep.
@Aleen My solution is to only read feeds in my RSS reader, because I can never get into the habit of refreshing Social Media apps every X minutes. I have added my Micro.blog feed into it. What I like about it is that I can still read everything even though I go hours or days between having the time to look at it.
@pat while I think this is really good point, there are other reasons to set up separate feeds. I earlier recommended this be implemented via categories as an MVP. My reason is Iām very excited for a categories concept on MB. Following people is sometimes what I want, but what I often want is to follow a person-topic combo. This is especially true for personal accounts versus media personality accounts. I see short v. long as similarly along this boundary and a good place for MB to start testing multiple feeds that you can choose which ones to subscribe to.
@hjertnes Is there an RSS feed of all the posts that appear in my timeline? I canāt find that.
@jsonbecker I agree, categories would be sweet! But unless Iām not understanding something, my guess is that the same could be accomplished by filtering against the tags key in the json feed.
Either way, I donāt have a strong argument against producing multiple feeds. As I said in my reply, I just donāt believe itās the best solution to the problem of reading the same thing in two locations.
@hjertnes wonderful, thanks!