Making RSS Discoverable is Hard — Stuart Breckenridge

Let’s talk about the BBC.

The BBC surface a bunch of RSS feeds if you know where to look. However, in an RSS reader if you try to follow bbc.co.uk or bbc.com, you’ll invariably get a “No Feed Found” error (or equivalent). Why? Because the BBC don’t surface these feeds under the hood in the <head> element of the HTML, which is what they should do. It’s at this point where RSS becomes difficult and where users drop out.

In these scenarios, my idea was to use Gobbler’s knowledge of feeds available on those domains. If someone put bbc.co.uk into the address bar, Gobbler would surface http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_uk_edition/business/rss.xml (BBC News UK) if it knew an RSS feed existed.

Easy to code, easy to implement, and adds immediate value for discoverability. So, why have I pulled it?

Respecting private feeds.

I subscribe to publications where I receive a unique, private RSS link, that contains articles that I’ve paid for. Imagine a scenario where Gobbler surfaced that URL? It would completely undermine said publication’s business model.

I still think there is merit in the feature. I just need to find a way to not surface the wrong URLs.