Why Are People Still Creating RSS Feeds?

Question

...instead of using the Atom syndication format?

Atom is a well-defined, general-purpose XML syndication format. RSS is fractured into four different versions. All the m

Answer 1

RSS is more simple, that's where its strength is. Atom is better defined, yes, but that's the problem: they made it easy to write a very complex feed when at the end of the day you want a simplified summary.

Why do so many people prefer RSS ? It's easy and gets the job done. You can edit it by hand; not so easy with Atom. Have you ever tried to write a feed reader ?

IMHO, the only thing Atom did good was multiple enclosures.

Why do some websites offer two feeds, RSS and Atom ? Because they can and because some ancient feed reader may not support Atom.

Answer 2

Worse is better.

Answer 3

For the same reason that every "better" solution did not succeed for mass market. RSS is widely deployed and it solves the same problem Atom is trying to solve.

Personaly, I have a large number of RSS feeds that I generate myself. They are working today and solving a problem. I wonder how you could convince me to rewrite all those feeds to Atom just to use a "better" format.

Now if you consider how the REST architecture is gaining visibility these days because of better and simpler caching and scalability, these are real arguments. I understand that Atom is closely related to the REST hype and it may be the best way to market it. As REST will be gaining visibility, so are its related formats like Atom.

Answer 4

Because for the majority of purposes either will work, and RSS has the advantage of being the acronym that defines the category.

Beyond that you would have to email individual sites and ask them.

Answer 5

The same reason that people are HTML 4 loose, strict, XHTML transitional, XHTML strict, etc. Legacy code / working with what you already know.

Besides, both formats have their merits. Better to support a couple different formats than have one be-all-end-all-subscribe-to-everything feed that becomes bloated.

Answer 6

Vincent, I'm not suggesting that anyone rewrite existing RSS feeds just for the sake of it, that would be a big waste of time! In terms of RSS being the acronym that defines the category, I'm guessing that most users now identify with the orange feed icon, rather than the specific flavour of XML behind it.