[brajkovic]

I hate to be that guy, but who gives a crap? I don't know of anyone who actually uses any of the first 3 protocols listed here. RSS is somewhat useful, but when would I not want to use a dedicated client or some client library?

I'm not a backer but I'd rather they spend time developing their MVP and building infrastructure so they don't have the same issues that were so pervasive in Twitter's early years (Fail Whale every hour, anyone?).

[icebraining]

Atom is widely used (when you see "RSS", it's often Atom). And in any case, outputting the data in an extra format takes barely any time.

As for PubSubHubBub, all they have to do is add a tag to the feed with the Hub's url and send a POST request to the Hub when the feed has updates; that's it.

For the effort is takes (or should take, assuming they have a decent architecture), and the advantage of being automatically compatible with a bunch of existing applications, it'd seem strange not to do it.

[brajkovic]

What existing applications besides RSS readers? Who uses PubSub and Webfinger, and why would I want to use Atom/RSS for this type of service?

I don't see the point in this trying to be everything to everyone sort of deal.

[icebraining]

I had a reply, but I lost it due to session shenanigans, and I don't want to write it all again.

But for RSS applications: considering they already have more than 14000 Twitter recipes, supporting IFTTT seems an excellent reason for implementing RSS. Particularly since it should take a few dozen lines of code, if that, in any decent language.

[cmelbye]

It's a step towards federation and open access to your posts. Why wouldn't you want these protocols? Who wants to be locked down into one system? If that's what you want, use Twitter.