The short version:
As of today, I’ve removed the links the RSS feeds on this blog, and ultimately will phase them out completely in favor of email. If you want to stay up to date, please switch to an email subscription instead- I usually don’t write more than once a week, sometimes once a month.
The long version:
Imagine a world where Google Reader and Feedburner are both shut down – that future is half true already. One clear outcome is that some of my favorite blogs – infrequent, high quality ones – end up getting a lot less traffic. They update infrequently, because they are run by individuals or companies who are really busy :) That’s where RSS subscriptions are really valuable. And their titles aren’t linkbait, because they’re not crazy focused on driving traffic.
Contrast that to blogs that publish a lot like Business Insider or Techcrunch. I think they’ll end up reaping the rewards of a world without RSS. And aggregators like Flipboard, Techmeme, or Hacker News will become even more important. These apps and blogs are now part of your daily habit, in a way where the infrequent/boutique blogs will never be.
Ultimately, there’s a hole in the market that needs to be filled. In the meantime, I can see a lot of blogs switching to email subscriptions and more aggressively submitting their content to aggregators or Twitter. I have 10,000s of subscribers on my RSS feed right now, and I wish I had gotten them all on email instead. Whoops. Rather than waiting for Feedburner to get shut down, I’m going to make the move to email instead. Today’s removal of RSS links is the first step towards that.
