Member Avatar for InsightsDigital

I read on a blog about how RSS may be out. I dont know about you but I actually subscribe to many blogs and I look forward to reading or at least glancing my Google Reader's headlines. Yes, I dont have time for all the feeds but I do scan and read the compelling ones. What about you?

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This thread captures the exact conversation many had in 2009: casual readers (like and ) used feed readers, pushed RSS for clients, noted overlap with Twitter, mentioned email subscription forms, and took a creative tack with a screensaver. For anyone landing here years later (this note dated February 18, 2026), the short, practical answer is: RSS isn’t “dead” — it’s evolved. It still matters for audience ownership, syndication (including podcasts), and automation, even if the specific readers people named back then (for example, Google Reader) no longer exist.

Practical guidance for site owners and marketers: keep subscription choices simple — visible RSS, an email option, and social links. Offer both a machine-friendly feed and a human-friendly landing page for subscriptions. Decide whether to publish full-text or summary feeds (summaries reduce scraping and keep people on-site; full text improves convenience). Make feeds discoverable in HTML and test them with a validator and popular readers so your entries parse cleanly.

Add an autodiscovery link in your HTML head so browsers and readers can find the feed automatically. Example:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Site Name — RSS" href="/feed.xml" />

Troubleshooting tips: ensure your feed returns HTTP 200 with Content-Type application/rss+xml, keep individual item size reasonable, include clear titles and pubDates, and use canonical links to avoid duplicate-content problems. For workflows, use feeds as data sources for newsletters, social automation, or ingest into personal readers so users can pick how they follow you. Finally, the mix that worked in this thread still works: offer multiple consumption methods, validate the feed, and let users choose what fits their workflow.

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Member Avatar for MktgRob

I read on a blog about how RSS may be out. I dont know about you but I actually subscribe to many blogs and I look forward to reading or at least glancing my Google Reader's headlines. Yes, I dont have time for all the feeds but I do scan and read the compelling ones. What about you?

Same here. Also, for many of my clients who are trying to transition their clients and prospects away from e-mail newsletters and to subscibing to blogs, I advocate the inclusion of an RSS feed and the results have been good.

Member Avatar for mackone

I still use my feed reader... I find that a lot of the people I follow on Twitter are the same blogs and special interest sites that I read with Google Reader. I still use Google Reader, but not as much.

Edited by mackone because: n/a
Member Avatar for MktgRob

I still use my feed reader... I find that a lot of the people I follow on Twitter are the same blogs and special interest sites that I read with Google Reader. I still use Google Reader, but not as much.

The beauty about the RSS feed is that there are multiple ways to read them so you are not locked into one specific way.

Member Avatar for AndrewJ

A lot of sites now have email subscription forms for their feeds. eg feeddburner subscription forms.

Member Avatar for MktgRob

A lot of sites now have email subscription forms for their feeds. eg feeddburner subscription forms.

The other options that are good also are to have the RSS feed come in through your e-mail (not as an update message but a running list of new content, which I use for some through Outlook) as well as the RSS feed under favorites in IE.

Member Avatar for jason830

I just use google reader to subscribe the blog which i want to read.

Member Avatar for MktgRob

As I am still using a standard flip phone with no internet connectivity (You have to draw a line somewhere), can anyone tell me if there are any specialized phone apps for RSS feeds or does the existing technology work on the web-enabled phones?

Member Avatar for jbennet

If that phones browser supports XML
Most recentish standard phones run a cut down version of Opera, so maybe.

I use my screensaver to read RSS news feeds when my pc is idle

Member Avatar for MktgRob

If that phones browser supports XML
Most recentish standard phones run a cut down version of Opera, so maybe.

I use my screensaver to read RSS news feeds when my pc is idle

I would like to see that screensaver in action. Could you tell me where you got it? Thanks

Member Avatar for jbennet

Made it myself. Started out with a starter-kit from MS which i modified (check out this article) and ive changed a lot more since then, e.g got the facebook API working with it to display status updates as well.

Mac OSX comes with a RSS reader screensaver too i think

All a windows screensaver is is a .exe with some special properties, which closes upon click events, and is fullscreen, modal and frameless. Pretty easy to whip one up in Visual Studio Express (on my server i use API calls to get it to show memory and network status when idle)

Edited by jbennet because: n/a
Member Avatar for MktgRob

Once you cross over into the realm of coding I am at a complete loss. Thanks for the advice. I will check with one of my programmer friends and see if they can fix me up and I will also do a search to see if any exist already (someone may have made one similar to the Mac OSX one and released it for free!)

Member Avatar for InsightsDigital

I agree with you Marketing Rob. I was equally as lost. :-(

Member Avatar for MktgRob

I agree with you Marketing Rob. I was equally as lost. :-(

I did a search and this is what I came up with. It looks like slim pickings for Vista users but I am going to commence testing some of them and will let you know.

http://www.techyard.net/follow-rss-feeds-on-your-screensaver/

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