Ben Ubois was on The Changlelog the other day. Ben is the creator of Feedbin, my preferred RSS service. I say “service” and not “reader” because while I sometimes use Feedbin itself as a reader (it’s good), I also bounce around to other readers for fun. The API they offer enables this, which is a godsend. Right now I’m using a lot of NetNewsWire on my non-mobile machines, but ultimately it’s Feedbin under the hood syncing my read items and favorites and whatnot.

Adam Stacoviak mentioned that while he’s a Feedbin subscriber, he’s not much of an RSS user. They dig into why that might be in the show and it’s really interesting. Adam lists off a bunch of sites he’s got in there, and the problem sounds like the sites themselves. While it’s great the sites offer RSS and all, there is a bunch of “firehose” style news sites, with a signal/noise ratio that is not great for any one reader. Don’t subscribe to sites that do news as a business, was part of the advice, and I like that.

The “sweet spot” they honed in on is sites that publish more like weekly or monthly. So your RSS reader is kind of a catcher for less-oft published articles. That’s almost tough to hear as an RSS lover, because a little machine to catch random articles you might miss is quite a niche thing. No wonder RSS never seems to be able to take off.

I think I’d widen that sweet spot to even daily or multi-daily publishing sites, but if you’re getting to 5x and above daily, it’s too much for a good RSS experience. I’ve never been able to put my finger on that, but now I think that’s it.

I’ve had a draft post “Should we be able to pause an RSS feed as a reader?” for a while, but I’m deleting it now. That’s a niche feature for a thing that is already niche. If a feed is overwhelming to you, it’s unsubscribe town. Pausing isn’t an answer. If any publishers out there agree, I think an answer might be an RSS feed that is somehow trimmed down. A best-of-the-week collection, perhaps.

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