The Death of RSS

I know this topic has been discussed before, especially after the death announcement of Google Reader, but RSS is still around.

Most websites and web applications on the web still publish a RSS Feeds of their content, so the standard has not been abandoned as of yet. But I have noticed an little thing since the death of Google Reader – the announcement and links to RSS Feeds have completely vanished on sites.

The feeds are still there but no one knows or cares, the little (and sometime huge) links to a site’s feed use to be a big thing around the web. This button use to be subdued to very over the top, but since the announcement of the closing of Google Reader the links have gone the way of the dodo.

I know that the feed is still there but the lost of the link sadness me, just a tiny bit. I do understand that only technical users knew what and how to use a RSS Feeds – myself included.

However, I’m glad from a design point of view that I no longer need to provide space to a link that no one would even touch. I know at the time of this writing my own site still has a RSS link up there in the header of the site, but that will be changing. In the next version of this site that will be changed to some popular social media links, while the link to the RSS feed will be no where to be found.

Looking towards the future, RSS next big fall will be when Google discontinues FeedBurner. If you don’t know what FeedBurner is, the simple answer is, it’s a service to host RSS Feeds for websites, to allow the feed owner to get more analytics about their RSS Readers. The slightly longer story is that Google purchased FeedBurner back in 2007 and since that acquisition has left the property in some odd state that it exist but not supported. Google has not developed any new features for it, but they have End of Life parts of the service. Thus making many people that use the service to look for new providers and doubting its future.

Even though RSS is no longer as prominent as it was once (but was it really?), it’s still out there and people are still using it. After the shutdown of Google Reader I migrated over to Digg Reader – is Digg better than Google, it’s about the same but it works.

So just because a technology is not used by everyone, does not mean it’s useless. As long as RSS is useful, I will continue to use it – on my own sites and project I develop, as along as it is the right thing to do.

If you’re looking for my RSS Feed you can find it here

Regarding the topic: I have no idea why i decided to write about this topic, it just kinda just POPed into my mind while just relaxing today.