The reason we are going to talk about this matter today is a little funny to be honest:
That is, when I was surfing the Internet the other day, I found such a Weibo.
I don't know what you think after reading it
To be honest, I empathize with this blogger's idea – RSS is a good civilization indeed.
As a result, I was planning to leave a comment to interact with the blogger, and when I pulled it to the comment area, I found that the first like was this:
Ha???
Good guys, now surfing on Weibo friends, have forgotten what RSS is.
Sigh, or our poor friendliness, everyone must remember the glory days of the Internet RSS service.
everyone... Sure... Remember that?
Hey, it doesn't matter if you don't remember, although in a sense, it can be regarded as the originator of the WeChat public account.
I think at that time, he also witnessed and promoted the open sharing of the Internet.
But later, with the information barriers and enclosure competition erected by the Internet giants, RSS, which once witnessed the open style of the Internet, has died in name only.
This story is not too long, let's start from the beginning:
More than a decade ago, there was no Zhihu, Weibo, or subscription number on the Internet.
At that time, the vast majority of big bulls published articles and opinions on their own blogs.
Ruan Yifeng gangster's blog ▼
The blog of that year was actually an independent website, and if you want to see anyone's article, you have to go to whose website.
And these sites don't have a push function!
That is to say, if you chase more big guys, you have to manually scan everyone's blog site every other day or two to see if there is an update.
Not very elegant, right.
In this context, the RSS subscription specification came into being.
At the time, there were two ways to use an RSS subscription.
One is to click the RSS subscription button on the blog, fill in the email address, and the blog post will send updates to your email address like a regular newspaper.
Another way is to use a dedicated RSS subscription software, after adding a good blog subscription link, you can pull the blog's latest Tweet updates in the software.
Speaking of this, many bad friends should have reacted, this thing is somewhat familiar.
Isn't this a "full-platform" version of the WeChat public account?
And not only the official account, RSS subscription is a true network-wide, all-platform content aggregation subscription!
Don't you dare to think about it?
So... Why did such a powerful service end up in this unheard of?
To put it bluntly, it's a ticket issue.
For today's Internet giants, "traffic" and "user retention time" are the most valuable resources.
So on the one hand, they build their own platform to attract creators to output exclusive content; on the other hand, they build information barriers, and only users who have downloaded apps or registered on the platform can see the complete content.
Blogs and RSS are essentially anti-closed, anyone can grab and white prostitute, and there is no business model.
Whether it's a blog site that provides servers, a creator who outputs content, or a service provider that provides RSS subscribers, except for a few rudimentary patch advertising revenues, most of the time it can only generate electricity with love.
Becoming a closed traffic giant can make a lot of money, and working for a closed traffic giant can feed and feed...
As a result, more and more content creators are leaving the blog + RSS subscription model that generates electricity with love.
There are also fewer and fewer websites that support RSS subscriptions.
However, in the past two or three years, people have begun to miss RSS again.
Because after the Internet giants monopolized traffic and built information barriers, they began to become more and more wanton.
Information cocoons, targeted pushes, more and more advertisements in the information flow, less and less useful information.
The algorithm that was originally used to push "everyone's interested" information has gradually become too noisy.
So RSS, a simple, open, and pure way of browsing information, has re-entered everyone's sight.
Over the years, many media have still maintained the traditional RSS subscription model, such as Zhihu Daily, 36Kr and so on.
There are also big guys who have done an open source project, which can convert some websites that do not originally support RSS subscriptions into RSS subscription formats through transit servers.
For example, Weibo, Station B, and the official website of some schools.
I even saw the subscription template of our bad review website in it.
It turns out that there are our bad friends here▼ ▼
However, nostalgia is nostalgia, but now if we want to use RSS revival to replace the algorithm push, it takes a lot of thought, and for ordinary people, it is not a long-term solution.
After all, RSS was already a technology more than 20 years ago, and when RSS was in the limelight, maybe even the function of the comment area was not born.
In addition to the RSS subscription links and clients like the one described above, we now want to have a good experience with RSS. We also need a lot of other software to configure the traffic crawler and the server ourselves.
Configuration and development is painstaking, it takes a lot of time to maintain, and the RSS crawl service that is not easy to get is easy to be killed by a patch from the manufacturer.
You say that everyone wants to clean up the net, why is it so troublesome?
And if you want to combat the annoying "noise" of algorithms and maintain the Internet environment, it is not enough for everyone to rely on themselves.
If it weren't for the algorithm's blind pushing, tossing and turning, and disgusting into this in recent years, everyone wouldn't miss RSS so much and miss the network environment at that time.
Fortunately, the phenomenon of the algorithm "out of control" may soon be improved.
After waiting months for the end of the solicitation period.
From March 1 this year, the mainland's "Regulations on the Administration of Internet Information Service Algorithms" came into force.
" Prevent algorithm-induced addiction or excessive consumption, strictly control excessive pushing and advertising, and make strict restrictions on algorithmic recommendations, and need to provide convenient switches for personalized recommendations "...
At this time, the big factories that frequently moved in the traffic chaos finally lifted the stone and smashed their feet.
Maybe one day, we don't need to toss RSS for half a day, but we can get the Internet experience so conveniently and quickly.
Just like it was when it was born.