It seems like for every website or blog there is an xml RSS Feed to go along with it, but do people actually use RSS feeds anymore? I mean I know facebook is pretty much one big RSS but for individual websites how many people do you actually think subscribe to them? Are they still relevant?
I don’t think it is as relevant as it once was but it is definitely still used. A lot of the Wordpress plugins are these RSS feed scripts that everyone seems to still use.
Yeah as far as running an embedded rss feed to a website but people actually using them in their browser I think is pretty much going the way of internet explorer - older people might use it but really that might be all.
I do think they are slowly dying off, but they aren’t dead yet. RSS readers like Reeder are still reasonably popular, from what I hear.
You can use an RSS feed to automatically post to your Twitter, Facebook etc accounts so I would have thought that such feeds are used more now with social media than they were before.
Oh yes indeed they are. I have nearly 180 subscriptions in Google Reader that I monitor several times a day, and in situations where there isn’t an RSS feed I’ll make use of a service that attempts to simulate a feed for a site instead.
I have them all grouped in to the following categories: Comics, CSS, Fun, Geeky, Google-related, Music, News, Photography, Programming, Scholar, and Video
The greatest thing about RSS is that it sends updates to you (push technology) instead if you having to get the info yourself (pull technology).
I don’t think RSS Feeds are any longer in use, except for the blogs which are constantly updated. The niches which usually make use of RSS excessively are Tech, health, sports and entertainment. Since we have social networking now which can provide live updates, people avoid subscribing to the RSS feeds.
So how do you feed the same update into all of your social media pages if you don’t use RSS to do it for you? The social media may have done away with the need to subscribe directly to RSS feeds but the RSS feeds are now useful for automatically feeding your updates to all of the different sociual media without your having to retype your posts multiple times.
I still have a rss reader, it’s an easy way to stay informed about a couple of blogs, without having to visit every blog all the time.
Is there anyway to identify between human RSS readers and bots? I seem to get a lot of hits on my RSS feed, but I’ve been told they’re probably just bots.
I never really made use of it to begin with, although I will still enable it on the websites I work on.
Yeah, I enabled it when I first set my site up…I was just wondering if I was missing out on monetizing my feed, but I’m unsure of how many people are actually reading it/if it’s just bots.
I make use of RSS all the time via Google Reader. It’s my main form of internet usage.
The number of sites that I am subscribed to are:
- 30 Comic strips
- 13 CSS
- 14 Fun
- 28 Geeky
- 4 Google
- 3 Music
- 7 News
- 4 Photography
- 45 Programming
- 20 Scholar
- 7 Video
So yes, some people to use RSS quite heavily.
I like it because with Google Reader I can easily keep up to date with things from wherever I am - even on the tablet or the phone.
Wow, you make good use of it! Are ads viewable on Google Reader?
Yes, some are. The details of how to achieve that though are beyond my personal level of interest in the area.
Hmm, OK thanks. I might need to look into that, just to at least test it and see how it goes. I’ve noticed that Adsense used to have a feeds option but no longer offer it. I’ll have to try and find an alternative.
Thank you!
In some cases user agent will give away a bot, though it can be easily faked to emulate a legitimate reader/browser.