✿ what is rss?

RSS is a standardized form of web feed that takes the form of an .xml file; lots of blog-focused platforms autogenerate and autoupdate these feed files with content, timestamps, etc that can then be fed into a reader to present the content in a digestible manner.

blogs might be intimidating: how do you keep up with a ton of different URLs? do you have to bookmark them and remember to visit them? or wait for your friend to tell you when there's a new update? unlike social media platforms that have predictable forms for their content, blogs take so many different shapes and forms and content streams! the standardized form of RSS then lets us then use RSS readers to make our own self-curated selection of content from blogs and other content platforms of our choosing.

as long as the blogs you're interested in provide an RSS feed, you can now keep track of each one's new posts in one digestible stream. you can also keep track of news sites, twitters, subreddits, facebook pages, publications, and podcasts with RSS - among others. it's not just useful for blogs!

.xml files look like this, which is terrifying. this blog's RSS feed can be found at https://write-yourself-in.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default (for any blogger blog, just swap in this blog's title in that URL to access your own RSS feed).

rss reader

now that we know RSS feeds provide a standardized form of presenting real-time content updates from our blogs, we need to find a way to actually read these. 

(a lot of these readers offer pricing plans, but the free tier should be enough for most casual cases. for example, feedly is free to follow up to 100 feeds.)

Feeder

I mostly read blogs on my desktop and browse with Chrome. I use Feeder that pops up a modal of the newest blog posts (ignore my terrifying notification count) that I click through to view and read the post on the site itself (because I like seeing the customization of each blog and remembering who the author is and their latest posts — rather than seeing content in a silo).

with the feeder extension, visiting any RSS feed page (the scary blob of plaintext above) actually prompts you to add it to the reader – so it's super easy to use and navigate. you can also see a list of all the blogs you follow and your favorite ones.

(chrome extension, desktop, mobile)

https://feeder.co

Feedly

the most popular rss reader is feedly; very similar to feeder in terms of the platforms it's available on (though my screenshot is only its desktop site). you can have several boards and folders to organize everything you follow (as opposed to just one massive list), see a stream of all posts for each blog, mark things to be read later/as favorites. there's also some interesting social features.

the most terrifying thing to me is knowing how many other people follow my blog, which is at least just 9 here

(chrome extension, desktop, mobile)
https://feedly.com/

Inoreader

another popular option is inoreader – very similar to feedly. it also doubles down on discovery, suggesting you a lot of similar streams if you'd like to seek that out.

(chrome extension, desktop, mobile)
https://www.inoreader.com/

do you have a better explanation of RSS? mine really sucked
what RSS reader do you use? how do you like to read?
how can an RSS reader still respect the character of each blog – especially if one our interests in moving away from centralized social networks is to have more agency in look, feel, and environment? which RSS reader provides you the reading experience that best balances efficiency/clarity and feel for you?