Since a few days ago, when Xian Guo announced the closure of its RSS subscription service, many people have been saying that RSS is dead. In fact, for ordinary users, Xian Guo is indeed the most popular RSS reader they have come across. The popularity of RSS in the past was closely related to the popularity of (independent) blogs. However, the closure and transformation of RSS readers nowadays make people can't help but sigh for the past and lament the decline of blogs today.
What is RSS? According to the introduction from the encyclopedia, "RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a format specification for message sources." Simply put, it allows you to see the updated content of the websites you subscribe to from a webpage or a client. Really simple syndication may be the original intention of RSS.
Since July 2013, when my beloved Google Reader announced its closure, I have tried various RSS reader services that are still alive and functioning, such as Digg and Feedly. However, I am not satisfied in my heart. Although they are still alive, they have lost their vitality, no longer updating or innovating. From a business perspective, the closure of Google Reader and Xian Guo was a logical outcome. RSS readers have high operating costs, and they have almost no advantage in advertising, making it difficult for companies to make money from RSS readers. Therefore, it is natural for them to be closed down in line with the trend.
But why do I say RSS is not dead? Well... you see, all those apps on your phone, such as Zaker and Today's Headlines, which one of them is not using RSS technology to fetch articles? Maybe you no longer use pure RSS readers, but new forms of news aggregation applications and major websites still use this technology standard.
As long as an application or website has a need to "fetch website updates," it may be using RSS. As mentioned above, RSS has not really disappeared, it has just moved from the foreground to the background, silently playing its role and appearing in front of you in a different way.
Perhaps one day, RSS will truly disappear in a technical sense, and then who will remember the founding principles of the RSS protocol? That would be the moment when we should truly mourn.
"It exists based on the belief in the openness and equality of the Internet: everyone has the ability to create an RSS feed, allowing everyone to read it, allowing third-party developers to use it, and allowing anyone who wants to read it to do so."
Fortunately, there are still many websites and independent blogs that support the RSS protocol in this world. Last week, in a WeChat group chat with Mr. Chen Yibin, the deputy editor-in-chief of "iFanr," we discussed that there are still many excellent independent blogs both domestically and internationally that continue to maintain high-quality updates. However, we found that the channels for these quality blogs have narrowed, for example, the closure of GFW.
This is also a kind of sadness. I am surrounded by excellent blogs that have been blocked. I won't list them, but if you know, then you should understand what I mean.