[lallysingh]

RSS declined because nobody wanted to put up content on 3rd party systems that didn't pay them.

Large media companies had to actively do work to shut down their RSS feeds, when they could've just done both. They took them down because they weren't making money on keeping them up.

[acdha]

> RSS declined because nobody wanted to put up content on 3rd party systems that didn't pay them.

The feeds I use come directly from the provider in almost every case, and some of them had ads so it put the system ahead of Twitter/Facebook/Google+ in that regard.

The theory was that they’d get more revenue from more users but we know that wasn’t true even when the numbers weren’t totally faked like Facebook’s video push. What we know is the case is that the companies who pushed those rosy predictions profited considerably and were able to freeze out many competitors.

[aylmao]

If the incentives would've been right there's no reason this should've been the case. Large media companies don't make money form being in the Facebook newsfeed, but rather from the traffic redirected from there.

[JohnFen]

> RSS declined because nobody wanted to put up content on 3rd party systems that didn't pay them.

Probably 2/3 of the RSS feeds I use come directly from the content producers, not from third party systems.

[lallysingh]

I meant people's RSS readers as the 3rd party, vs the 1st party website hosted by the producer. Not the clearest way to say it, I admit.

[JohnFen]

Ah, I understand. RSS is often used for things that aren't connected to a website at all, so I don't automatically make that connection.