Reading up on rss

Google Reader's true value was its accidental social network and curation layer, not feed reading, and its shutdown pushed users toward open protocols like RSS and email for direct creator connections.

Blogger Terence Eden finds RSS feeds and email subscribers drive more traffic to his personal site than Google Search over a 28-day period.

HN users share RSS subscriptions to reduce doomscrolling, favoring tech blogs, webcomics, and substacks over algorithmic feeds.

RSS.Social aggregates the latest posts from Kagi's Small Web directory of personal blogs and indie sites into a single real-time feed.

Hys is a fast terminal RSS reader in Zig that enforces once-daily fetching to combat doomscrolling, designed like a digital morning newspaper.

Hacker News commenters debate making RSS more engaging through algorithmic curation and discovery while cautioning against replicating TikTok's endless scroll model.

Browser extensions StreetPass and Blog Quest use calm tech to quietly discover Mastodon profiles and RSS feeds while browsing, enabling non-extractive indie web discovery.