[betwixthewires]

The reality is nobody is ever going to pull it off.

RSS was great. I mean, it is great, but it used to be too. It didn't die in the public eye by accident. It was killed by the big boys who realized they can't make money off of you if they can't decide what content you see in front of you, you don't run their software on your device, and/or you don't have to sign up for an account to get the content.

Try to pitch a new syndication spec to anyone that controls a large portion of the information availability online, they're not stupid, they'll shoot you down because "we tried that already, it wasn't profitable enough."

The era of standardized protocols, freedom of information, ease of communication, interoperability, tools that empower the user, that era is dead. And it was too short lived. The internet we have today looks like something designed by Dr Strangelove. If you want to have sensible tools that work for you you're going to be swimming in a very shallow information environment with almost exclusively other zealous enthusiasts of whatever tool you think is better.