Is it over for RSS readers?

I don't know if it is over for me, but I haven't been as disciplined lately reading my feeds.   I still use RSS readers, of course, but I'm not necessarily following the same set of blogs in linear way.  I am finding myself keeping up through items shared in google reader or via friendfeed or twitter -- and while I'm writing via Zemanta. 

An interesting discussion going on here.  I'll have to dig in deeper.

What do you think?

Comments

[Roger Carr]

Hi Beth,

I don't know what I would do without using Google Reader to keep up with the many blogs I am interested in (yours included of course). RSS gets a "thumbs up" from me.

[CogDog]

No.

If it were I would not be commenting here.

It is pure silliness to talk about things on the internet being "over" or summizing in such sweeping scoble statements -- it is too big and wide, and allt he Scoblites are a bit to close to the trees to know the forest.

[Stephen Downes]

There's a weird terminological confusion going on over there. They are talking about using Google Reader instead of an RSS reader. But Google Reader *is* an RSS reader.

What makes it different is that it combines reading RSS with a bit of pseudo social networking. Because it is web based, it can allow people to share links, to comment on each other's posts, and the like.

I have been using Google Reader for a long time, but I have been sharing through my own web site, and not so much through Google Reader (though I do have a share feed) because I don't think personal social networking activities should be based on a commercial silo.

[Brad Bell]

Terminological confusion is right. I though the subject was whether the adoption rate for stand-alone RSS readers like NetNewsWire were dwarfed by a massive uptake in tools like Google Reader. This wouldn't be surprising, as we have a collective tendency to tremble in abject horror before internet applications which are not email or a web browser.

Of course, in the bigger picture, RSS is *the* star internet technology. It's the way to get information from here to there. Everything seems to translate into an RSS feed, from bookmarks, to mobile text messages, to media like photos and videos, and so on. And RSS translates back into web pages, and everything else. RSS is a filter. It's the data stream. It's automated. It's lively.

I took RSS feeds from a dozen of my favourite charity marketing web sites, mashed them together in Yahoo Pipes, and then sent the mashed up feed to be published in the sidebar of my blog. This effectively creates an RSS reader on my site.

Similarly, RSS makes it possible to automatically update a photo gallery of my son on his granny's iBook, thousands of miles away. The pictures in her photo software update, her desktop picture updates, and her screensaver plays an auto-updating slideshow of her grandson. I drag and drop a picture in iPhoto, it shows up on her desktop. Brilliant!

RSS is becoming the most versatile and powerful internet technology we've got! All we need now is some dodgy spam marketers to prevent it from working.