Yesterday I wondered aloud why RSS readers look like email clients.
@brentsimmons replied. Turns out he borrowed that layout for NetNewsWire in 2002 — and twenty years later, he's asking why no one's tried something different.
That conversation became an essay. I built a visual version (with an ASCII fallback).
@tg @fj @brentsimmons I see the issue with this (Dave Winer has been talking about it for years), but I think part of the problem with RSS readers is that some things are less “phantom” than others.
There are a lot of things in my feed reader that are essentially evergreen. I could read it in a year and appreciate it just as much.
Some posts, honestly, I could never read at all and be fine (enough of those in a row, though, and I'll probably unsubscribe from the feed).
@tg @fj @brentsimmons Other posts, though… I really do want it to have a badge (or some sort of indication that this is hot shit I should get to). Maybe it's topical in a way that won't matter in two days, let alone a week. Maybe it's from a writer whose work I love and would hate to miss out on.
A feed reader that effectively manages this kind of use case heterogeneity would be most impressive, but IMHO none of the metaphors you provided really do that any better than what NNW does now.
Terry Godier
Jeff C. 🇺🇦🇬🇱