WHY RSS?

I’ve been running this question around in my mind ever since I found out that Google was killing Google Reader and its associated sync service. Two months or so ago, without much thought, I decided to just pull the plug on RSS period and do without.

I used to be an RSS lover. At one point in time, I had well over 300 feeds in my stream. It didn’t take long for me to realise that there was no way I could read and absorb the thousands of articles that appeared in my stream daily. Add to that the fact that so many sources report on the same stories and the mess of duplication of “news” this created and it didn’t take me long to realise I had to do something about the mess that RSS had become for me. So I began the process of slowly cutting back on the number of feeds I was subscribed to until in the end I only had 12 feeds. Yep – 12 feeds gave me all the information I needed and wanted and even within those there was still quite a bit of duplication of stories. But it was manageable and I didn’t fuss over it too much. I just marked a lot of news as read without even looking at anything other than the headline.

But I also noticed a trend. Every single RSS feed I was reading was available in another format. It started with Flipboard where I noticed that almost everything I was reading was available there. And Flipboard also offers the ability to read RSS feeds, so I started pulling most of my feeds into there. Then I discovered Zite. While Zite, as far as I’ve discovered, doesn’t pull RSS feeds, it offers in it’s various channels everything I was reading in RSS. Between Zite and Flipboard, I realised that using a separate RSS reader was just plain redundant and totally unnecessary. So when the news of Google Reader’s demise came, I just shrugged and didn’t worry about it. Eventually I just removed all dozen of my feeds from GR and stopped using it. And I haven’t missed it even one little bit.

With the acquisition of my HTC One, I’ve discovered that BlinkFeed is another excellent choice for getting the information that interests me. The biggest issue with BlinkFeed is that you eat what HTC feeds you and there is precious little customization that can be done. If HTC ever loosens the reigns and allows you to add your own sources, I could even see myself abandoning Flipboard. Zite would stay because it offers some unique channels wherein I get sources that wouldn’t be so easy to find otherwise.

So for me, RSS brings nothing to the table except duplication and information overload. But I also realise that many people use RSS far more than I ever did. There are folks out there that subscribe to thousands of feeds. (For goodness sakes – WHY? Can anyone even remotely process that amount of information, not to mention the time investment?) And admittedly, apps like Zite, Flipboard and BlinkFeed aren’t exactly what you called streamlined and offer a lot of superfluous eye candy. And I’m sure these apps use a lot more resources than a simple RSS reader. Some folks want a simple interface and want to process hundreds, if not thousands, of sources. So be it and good on them. Go thee and have fun. But in the end, I’ve discovered that RSS just isn’t something I need or that I find important in information consumption.

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