Why RSS isn’t Mainstream

What is it Missing?

RSS is an amazing tool for staying up to date across thousands of websites, but something mission critical is missing. There simply isn’t anything to that will recommend new feeds. This makes building up your feed list a hastle, especially if websites don’t list their feed urls anywhere. As I’ve continued to use RSS, I see an increase in it’s value as a tool to create a more decentralized and safer internet.

We need a Spotify, Pandora, or a Facebook for but just for RSS and without the creepy tracking/cyber-stalking. Just a simple website with a recommendation engine built off of other people’s feeds. A good feature on top of the recommendation would be to have a public profile on the site, that you can link your friends to with feeds you recommend to others.

Assuming basic security and encryption practices are put in place, I think this idea has a ton of promise to help a lot of people without being bloated or a menace to privacy. For additional privacy, the website could allow users to choose which feeds to enable as publicly recommended.

Honestly, since the idea isn’t crazy big, and if this doesn’t already exist, I think I’ll take a stab at trying to make this eventually.

If you also want to see this happen or if you know of a website that already does this, please contact me.

*[RSS]: Really Simple Sindication