I ❤️ RSS

I try to consume most of my online content via RSS feeds - my reader of choice is Reeder (now called Reeder Classic). It is one of a few pieces of software that I have bought for all of my platforms (macOS, iOS and iPadOS) and it’s great.

Whilst it does everything I need it to, it doesn’t sync with feeds unless the app is open and online, meaning that if there is a particularly high throughput feed, it may end up missing articles between syncs. This isn’t so much of a problem these days, but I used to subscribe to both the Techcrunch and The Verge feeds, both of which are fairly prolific.

A couple of years ago started using Feedbin, an online service that checks all of my feeds on a regular basis and builds up the backlog that I can then sync to Reeder whenever I open the app. Works great - I never missed an article and was able to support an independent developer with a $5 / month subscription.

Subworthy

After a number of months, in a bout of developer hubris I thought "I could build that", so put together my own version of Feedbin for personal use. I came up with Subworthy¹ - and it was pretty good. In a bid to counter my own digital distraction and FOMO I even set it up so that it would only allow me to consume my feeds once a day via a daily email, removing the need for Reeder.

It worked out well so I added some registration logic and opened it up for free via a small launch on Product Hunt. Even though it incurred some small costs for hosting and email delivery (I opted for the excellent Postmark) I didn’t feel it offered enough functionality to monetise in a meaningful way, so never put in any time to building out the feature set.

After about six months I decided to shutter Subworthy - it was a fun exercise but there were a growing number of edge-cases that I wanted to cover for myself and didn’t have the time to dedicate to developing the features. I ended up back on Reeder, manually syncing my feeds.

Cleaning House

At the start of this post I stated that “I try to consume most of my online content via RSS feeds” - emphasis on ‘try’. An increasing amount of the creators I follow now post via YouTube or email newsletter (or podcasts, but that isn’t an issue), which is why I have just signed back up to Feedbin.

For YouTube content I use the native app on my iPad and I hate it. Not because it is a bad app, but because of the number of distractions it has. I’m only interested in the ‘Subscriptions’ tab, but the app will always open on the general ‘for you’ style page. When I finally settle on a video I actually intend on watch from a creator I follow, there are links to other videos (or advertising) in the sidebar. So many rabbit holes to disappear down, and I’m too weak to resist them! I’m also not a fan of including the ‘Shorts’ of the channels I subscribe to on the ‘Subscriptions’ tab - they are typically just promotional snippets of the videos I’m going to watch anyway.

I had never considered subscribing to channels via RSS feeds - to be perfectly honest I didn’t even realise it was an option - but Feedbin allows you to subscribe to channel. To be fair, Reeder can subscribe to YouTube channel feeds as well, but the killer feature is the email newsletters.

I no longer want to have the content I want to consume to be mixed in with email communications, which tend to be either conversational or transactional in nature. When I’m checking my emails I’m rarely in the right frame of mind to read longer-form content so it’s so easy for things that I would otherwise find valuable and enjoy to get lost. Feedbin allows me to move all of my email newsletters out of my inbox and into my Feedbin feed. All I needed to do was resubscribe to all of the newsletters I like using a special Feedbin email address - and unsubscribe from my personal email. It has been a great opportunity to take stock of what creators I subscribe to and cull those that no longer interest me.

Now all of my content gets fed-in using Feedbin, and I can either consume it via Reeder, or directly on the Feedbin site. Rather than flip-flopping around looking at other options (like I did the last time I used Feedbin) I want to stick with it this time, so I’ve been bullish and subscribed for a whole year upfront for $50.

Incidentally, if you’re interested in what sorts of content I subscribe to you can check out some highlights on my blogroll - plus my entire OPML export here.