For better or for worse, we have the entire wealth of knowledge at our fingertips.
What we might consider liberating also puts a lot of pressure on us. The information age demands our attention and the 24/7 news cycle has definitely upped the ante.
Whether you’re a true news junkie or want to stay informed on new developments into your area of interest or industry (let’s be honest, new developments are always coming in from all directions), the volume of information you have to handle has exponentially increased.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, maybe now is the time to get an RSS feed reader.
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Are RSS feed readers still relevant?
RSS feed readers were massively popular over a decade ago, which in Internet years is centuries. They had their place as the only way to navigate the booming culture of blogging, but as with most online trends have died off. Famously with the killing of Google Reader, and then with the news of Mozilla Firefox discontinuing its support for RSS altogether.
But that hasn’t really caused a true extinction event. RSS has been the blueprint, upon which what we know today from newsletters to podcast catchers, is built. So RSS feed readers hung around with some following, but there’s been a resurgence in their popularity.
As developers take the initial concept and play around with its potential, RSS readers are well on their rise in relevance.
Why should you use RSS feed readers?
I’ve come to appreciate RSS for its convenience. I’m by no means a super user and my reader has mostly come in as a way to stay on top of my core subscriptions. I prefer RSS, because there’s no distraction. I won’t be led astray by other posts promoted on the site or be tempted to scroll through Facebook on a new tab. The mobile application locks you in to only the latest headlines. It’s a one-and-done job.
Students have adopted RSS readers as a studying tool. RSS certainly helps with the research part for an essay or paper. It’s why journalists and writers also embrace RSS readers. Digital businesses have found excellent uses for keyword monitoring and social media listening.
It’s up to you how you adapt your RSS feed reader to your needs and the market has its variations.
How can it help you stay informed?
You have all relevant news together
We have to talk about the most obvious advantage to getting an RSS feed reader – consolidating all your online reading into a single application. That’s why we have RSS readers in the first place. Manage your reading without a hassle. Today this looks quite different as people have broadened their media consumption to vastly different formats like audio, visual and social media posts.
RSS feeds have kept up with the times, offering users ample opportunities to subscribe to activity in LinkedIn groups, navigate the expanses of Reddit and employ Twitter to its full potential in a targeted approach. You have the full spectrum of support for any type of media.
You receive everything immediately
RSS readers crawl sites every few minutes – or even faster in some cases – and syndicate content at a near instantaneous pace.
That’s what makes readers so efficient in following unfolding news stories. You receive updates as soon as they’re published and in chronological order. An automated feed guides you through every detail and every potential take depending on how selective your subscription list is.
Say goodbye to having to manually load each individual site. Or worse – refreshing the home page for any new updates. As long as your dashboard is open either on your browser or application, you won’t miss a single thing.
You can browse through numerous topics
In the past, RSS readers placed the responsibility on the user to populate their feeds with sites, but now things are a lot different. RSS readers have crossed over into the world of productivity tools, so there’s a lot more on offer when it comes to features. One is the ability to tap into the readers’ database, which is user-generated.
What readers like Inoreader have done is manage to organize important feeds into respective topics made for the explicit purpose to make browsing a lot more convenient. Add a great search and you are all set to research news in any field from politics to healthcare to technology.
You can check popular feeds
Alongside topic recommendations, RSS readers also widely promote their most popular feeds.
Feedly and Inoreader are at the forefront in efficient content discovery by grouping feeds under topic umbrellas like business and technology. Only to then branch out into more specific topics.
This is only the starting point as internal search has become the backbone for these two RSS readers in keeping users well informed and delivering quality results on their searches.
The Old Reader does something a little bit different as it places value on individual articles that go on to trend thanks to heightened user activity and the number of likes viral articles receive. Either way you stay plugged into the collective trends at the moment and supplement your reading.
You can see what others follow
RSS feed readers are moving into social sharing territory. Current readers already greatly benefit from integrations with other applications and social media platforms be it through internal support or services like IFTTT. It’s not natural for RSS feed readers to take on traits of some social media.
The Old Reader positions itself as one of the more social readers. Users can follow their friends to see what sites they frequent and enjoy. You can also share articles internally. That’s a great way to add some additional information sources to your own core of subscriptions.
Inoreader also gives its users the ability to broadcast and comment on articles on the app, which your friends can see, if they subscribe to you. Inoreader has invested in the social aspect by putting in effect an invite feature whereupon accepting the new user is immediately subscribed to whoever invited them.