RSS Forever
Alas, NiemanLab (which I have long followed, honored, and even loved) joins TechCrunch in lauding a new app called HyperTexting for not calling what it relies on “RSS“:
Hailey isn’t the only one attempting to introduce the technology formerly known as RSS to a younger generation. (Nieman Lab predictors have been saying this was coming for a few years now.) The Electronic Frontier Foundation published a guide last month to “a tool that’s been around for decades that can help wrangle many of your feeds into something manageable.”*
RSS stands for exactly what it is: Really Simple Syndication. Changing RSS’s name now is like saying “online publishing, formerly known as the Web.”
The perp here is Caleb Hailey, who wrote The social-media-like interface to explain why he wants to re-brand RSS with his own app. He (and NiemanLab, it seems) blames RSS readers for what he sees as a stink on the standard. In making what he claims is a better RSS reader, he explains,
In order for RSS to succeed reach escape velocity, I think we need to stop saying “RSS”.2 That’s why, if you look closely, you’ll see that I’ve gone out of my way to avoid using terms like “RSS”, “Atom”, “JSON Feed” or “OPML” in the HyperTexting app and website.
That’s a dis on the work Dave Winer and other developers have put into making RSS, OPML, and other standards sturdy, useful, and generative. For example, here:
You Can Now Chat Using RSS
*By Jon Henshaw* in Social Media News
Jul 13, 2026 (Last updated on Jul 13, 2026)
Dave Winer, creator of RSS 2.0, built RSS Chat using open web standards to create a simple way to chat and follow conversations.
Dave Winer, the person who made Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0) the standard for following blogs in feed readers, asked whether RSS could be used for online chat, and quickly concluded that it could.
Using a combination of open web standards, RSS 2.0, OPML, Markdown, SQL, and WebSocket, Winer created RSS Chat. Winer said the part that makes it RSS-based is that every user has an RSS feed with all their posts, the whole community has an RSS feed, [and] there is an OPML file that list all the users.
That’s on top of nearly all of Web publishing, and podcasting. Heard of those?
Hell, RSS isn’t a drag on the apps that use it. It’s the sea that floats all their boats.
*All three of the links in that paragraph are pro-RSS. None say a renaming is “coming.”
2. [Caleb’s footnote says, “Hi Dave. 👋 I see you and I’m a huge fan! I suspect you may have thoughts™ on this take, but I think it’s possible we might agree more than we disagree. ↩︎” ] Sorry, Caleb. It’s still a dis. Call your product what you like, but don’t shit on the standard which, more than any other, makes your product possible.
Just a theory
LeBron is going to Miami. Old connections. Fun team with Giannis and Bam there. Lots of great golf, year-round.
I’m still an optimist
Rose Horowitch in The Atlantic: The End of Reading Is Here. Subhead: “Optimists once believed that universal literacy was inevitable. Now it seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history.” It’s an excellent piece. Worth the subscription.
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