What we lost – a paean, perhaps, to RSS
I&#x27;ll address this here: it&#x27;s something that I took as a given so didn&#x27;t cover when I wrote the post. RSS is not dead, as a protocol it still works, some sites still publish RSS feeds and some of them are even more than useless excerpts designed to get a click.<p>What is dead, or at least like Arthur, waiting for the right moment to come back is the idea of RSS as a system for connecting content streams together and building higher order services on top.<p>When too much thought &amp; conversation is captured inside Facebook, Twitter, Slack and all these other services who depend upon owning you &amp; your content, the RSS system cannot thrive.<p>I saw amazing possibilities arising out of individuals publishing their content, increasing use of micro-formats to add semantic information, and layering of services. That future didn&#x27;t happen.<p>That&#x27;s what I am sad about.