In defense of RSS

RSS is the best way to consume content online. It always has been, and it still is.

Not gated, not filtered, no ads, just want you want.

If you’re not using it, can I strongly suggest you give it a try? I use Feedly. Not sure the particular reader software matters, though.

Once you are ready to add this blog, just type in https://feeds.feedblitz.com/sethsblog to your Reader, that’s it, done.

Here’s what you need to know:

  1. It’s not particularly difficult to keep up with 200 blogs you care about in less than hour using an RSS reader.
  2. RSS provides home delivery. Instead of remembering where to click, or waiting for a post to get all buzzy and hot, the good stuff comes to you. Automatically and free.
  3. Subscribing to a blog is easy. In Newsfire, you can paste the URL of any blog and it automatically finds the RSS feed for you.

RSS is quiet and fast and professional and largely hype-free. Perhaps that’s why it’s not the flavor of the day.

[2021 update: I wrote this ten years ago. Since then, Google has tried to kill blogs, one social network after another has come along to entice people who want to write (and read) and figured out how to steal the permission that writers have worked so hard to earn. And yet, RSS, free, open, easy to use RSS persists. If you’re not the customer, you’re the product.]