We are into 2023, and I want to say I still miss RSS.
RSS used to be my personal internet tabloid of posts/blogs that I follow and want to keep up with. With its demise, I lost my list of good sites/websites/blogs.[^1] Indirectly it was like a bookmark manager only better.
The newsletter concept that replaced RSS, doesn’t quite sit too well with me. Atleast that is the closest you get to keeping up with all the latest from your favorite sites/blogs.
Why newsletter can’t replace RSS for me?
Signing up to a newsletter means that in order to keep up you need to constantly read all the newsletters you get regularly. This is a non starter for me. One of the biggest appeals for me is that the 50 odd sites that I subscribed to, when I open my rss reader I can pull all the articles from when I last left. And it gives me an easy way to keep up when I want to( which is probably once a week or more likely once in 2 weeks sometimes even once a month). With newsletters not only is it cumbersome to open each email from each of the websites that I am subscribed to, in the event that I don’t catch up on that weeks email then I have to navigate through each week’s email one by one. But instead in my RSS reader I just a view of all the articles. And then I can decide which one interests me and read in my reader without having open the link in a browser.
Then there is this issue of inbox getting cluttered that there is a possiblity that I might miss the email that I should really be reading. RSS provides a pull model, you decide when you want to pull/refresh your feed in client that you use. You can choose every minute or everyday or may once a week. I get to control this, whereas email is push model. Your inbox just gets flooded even if you don’t want it.
I recently unsubscribed myself from a lot of newsletters, it was getting too overwhelming and upsetting to see the unread count just keep on mounting. And not to mention it subconsciously creates/adds to FOMO[^2].I have been noticing the newsletters getting filled with promotional content and ads(not something that I fancy).
Another neat thing about RSS is that it lets you download the content for offline viewing, without forcing you to using another service just for offline consumption.
Also as a somewhat terminal junkie, I like to consume these content on my terminal(or it could just be a old habit).
As I say this, adding RSS support for this site is in my list. Hopefully in the coming months fingers crossed [^1]: Yes, it was pretty dumb of me that I didn’t have my list exported out. [^2]: FOMO is abbreviation for Fear Of Missing Out