Goodbye RSS

Two weeks ago I removed the last RSS feeds on LibraryThing (with the exception of the blog, which is a separate, Wordpress system).

Google got rid of Google Reader in 2013, and RSS had been declining steadily before then. It's moved from a central web technology to a seldom-used footnote. I feel sad about that; I'd prefer a world of blogs and "small pieces loosely joined" but I can't bring it back. LibraryThing's use was always a bit odd--e.g., we syndicated reviews by members.

Meanwhile, LibraryThing was maintaining tens of millions of RSS feeds, with some very old code underneath. Actual human use was minimal, but poorly behaved bots would find and harvest them pell-mell, impacting the site for everyone. Getting rid of RSS allows us to run faster, and saves programmer time for other, more valuable projects.

Shortly after I disabled them, news emerged that Google is sorta, kinda half-reviving RSS, putting a minimal reader in Chrome (see https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/19/undead-again-google-brings-back-rss/). If RSS really becomes a thing again, we'll look into shiny new RSS feeds.

well, I still use RSS feeds (via Inoreader), but indeed none of this comes from LT. I don't think either that members' reviews have a need for a feed.

I still use RSS as well, but I hadn't used any of LT's RSS feeds other than the blog, so, agreed.

But if RSS does resurge (I hope!) it might be interesting to think about other ways LT could implement it that might get more use for less effort, or make it possible for individual users to activate RSS for their stuff opt-in.

It's funny. I read my many dozens of RSS feeds every day to stay current on technology, software, design, and porsche/racing news. RSS is "used" now as much as it has ever been for me. Go figure.

I admit that I've never subscribed to an LT RSS feed, except for when OS X had a good RSS image feed reader for a screensaver. I was feeding LT covers through that and it was really cool. Alas, Apple did away with that feature.

>4 conceptDawg: I LOVED that screensaver.

>4 conceptDawg: I also still use RSS feeds for all sorts of blogs and sites that I don't want to have to remember to visit all the time, especially if they have an irregular posting schedule. I still miss Google Reader, but I've come to like NetNewsWire nearly as much.

>1 timspalding:

Not an RSS user but I appreciate the OP. The level of detail and narrative I like for keeping track of changes on LT and the motivations for them. I use it as proxy for generally understanding changes to the online world, however delayed that may be.

I'd been wondering what happened to the feeds. :/ I'm going to miss those.

This explains why my feed failed. I used my profile RSS feed to automatically harvest recently-added books into my Day One journal. Have been wondering what happened.

I was using my RSS feed to have my recently added books show up on my personal website. I haven't been adding books that often so only just realised it wasn't working anymore :(

It was a bit confusing when I tried to hit the URL directly and I got a 200 response, but no content. I found info on the wiki saying that RSS feeds were still a thing, before finally getting here.

It would be good if the feed URLs didn't return a 200, something like a 410 Gone with a short message (possibly linking here) would have been nice :)

RSS is still an alternative when hovering over a tag on the tag page -- https://www.librarything.com/tags/. The link obviously no longer works, but should be removed.

I have posted to Bug Collectors as well.

The link has been removed from the tags page now.

The OP says "Meanwhile, LibraryThing was maintaining tens of millions of RSS feeds, with some very old code underneath" and that it slowed things down, as well it might. I wonder whether the code could be turned back on such that individual users could choose to have their LT "news feed" be turned into RSS, whether with old or updated code... That would have a very minimal impact overall since the numbers would be small. RSS is not dead and is just as useful as ever -- I would love to be able to have my LT news feed show up in NetNewsWire alongside the many other feeds I follow. E.g. I have feeds there from my Instapaper, Pocket, and Pinboard accounts, as well as many blogs I read this way.

I also really miss the https://www.librarything.com/rss/recent/(username) RSS feed. Those of us who used it really appreciated it. In a way, it was my way of sharing my use of LibraryThing and my enjoyment of books. If not an RSS feed anymore, how about bringing back a simple web API then? (I'd think you'd rather bring back the RSS feed.)

>14 dblume: I'd much rather have RSS feeds back in some way.

Out there in the world, RSS is having quite a revival. Maybe the wave will wash back in here.

I still use RSS in Feedly but only for articles, not for discussion groups.

>17 CaptainTime: I recently started using NetNewsWire for Reddit posts. It makes skimming through them much faster. For a brief time, I could also read my Twitter feed in NNW, which was nice after the third-party apps were blocked. But that too has been blocked and I'm just about done with Twitter in general.

I use it for the usual blogs/articles use case as well.

>1 timspalding: It does feel like a little RSS revival is ongoing... I'd love it as well if they were re-enabled/re-implemented. There's some fun automations possible using user-friendly tools such as IFTT & Zapier.

To help stoke some interest in RSS, people could check out NetNewsWire (a Mac and iOS app), or Feedland.org (a web RSS reader). Both are free.

If there is a place to vote for the reinstatement of RSS feeds on LT, sign me up. Interoperability is crucial.

I never stopped using RSS feeds. I don't track my news via social media, and all my daily news is brought in via RSS from the web sites I follow using Feedly. Just because one player (Google) sunset their one feed readers does not signal the death of the format which is very useful. I only just recently found out about LibraryThing, and the first thing I wanted to be able to do is aggregate my activity here out to my own personal sites via RSS and was disappointed that there doesn't seem to be any way to follow someone's activity on LibraryThing from outside LibraryThing unless the user is individually posted/sharing out to Facebook or Twitter :(

Would love to be able to generate an RSS feed link from inside my account, that I could then share to those interested in following my activity, and also that I could use myself to ingest and include my activity on my other sites, or rebroadcast on to the Fediverse.