It’s Time to Get Back to RSS
RSS is dying (or dead) because it was incompatible with the dominant business model on the internet -- advertising.  This is why Google killed it.  This is why lots of professional publishers hated it.  With HTTP you&#x27;d be able to earn money via embedded ads but you&#x27;d earn exactly $0 via RSS since the feed was stripped of ads, just content.  This forced publishers to put useless blurbs, redirecting to the HTTP version, which was a bad user experience and just sucked.<p>I&#x27;d like to see new innovation around protocols and client &#x27;browsers&#x27; that were made with monetization built-in as a first-tier specification.<p>1) client sends request for content with some header with payment information attached.
2) server verifies payment transferred.
3) server responds to client with content after payment verification.<p>If this existed, RSS would be alive and well.  Internet publishers would be alive and well. The internet would be a more beautiful place with a viable first-party alternative to ads.<p>Challenges here would be:<p>- Sufficiently low transaction costs to make micropayments viable. (Bundle payments?)  
- Verifying proof of payment extremely fast<p>Someone(s) should create a new protocol.<p>FTP was invented in 1971.
SMTP was invented in 1982.
HTTP was invented in 1989.
RSS was invented in 1999.
Bitcoin was invented in 2008.<p>The amount of innovation around protocol has been abysmal relative to the explosion in creativity around applications on top of these protocols.  And SMTP&#x2F;HTTP are the only ones with any real mass adoption today.