Is RSS dead?

by Peter Mahoney
August 1, 2018

I named this post for the first autofill result I see in Google when searching for “is rss”.

Yesterday I added an RSS link to this site’s menu. I’ve long been a fan of real simple syndication, because it really is a simple way to share ideas and posts.

People have been saying RSS is done and dusted since the late 00s, when a post called Rest In Peace RSS started doing the rounds. The argument it made was that social networks essentially make it redundant.

Well, although I use social networking a bit (Twitter, and Facebook when I have to for work) I’ve always liked to do technology on my own terms; make my own sites, my own programs, from time to time even my own content management systems. And RSS is simply a way to blast out information. Other people can get my feed however they like, and I can similarly choose how to interact with the RSS feeds I subscribe to.

It’s not dead in 2018. But I’m not 100% sure it’s fully alive either.

But as more people turn from Facebook and the other major networks, maybe it’s becoming happily undead.

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SEO expert, web developer & designer, all-round nice guy, and ravenous information devourer.