WordPress Reader Is Criminally Under Marketed

[pauloflaherty.com@pauloflaherty.com]

WordPress Reader Is Criminally Under Marketed

I must admit that I’ve known about Reader, which is the WordPress.com tool for following blogs, for years now, but never realised it worked for sites that were not hosted on WordPress infrastructure. It actually allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds and import OPML files.

When you follow as many sites and blogs as I do, a good RSS Reader is the only way to fly.

I only discovered this functionality today when I decided to have a poke around after spying a post about a new feature called “Recommended Blogs”. It’s essentially a blogroll for your Reader profile.

Now I feel like a bit of an idiot for ignoring Reader for the past few years. Not only can I import all of my subscriptions from my current RSS reader, but I can easily reblog (republish or quote) parts of them on my own blog directly from within the interface, and can even write a post from within the feed.

I don’t have to switch to another service to find content to write about, and it’s all available on the web and in the Jetpack app on my phone.

I’m going to have to spend a few days actually using it as my main RSS reader to decide if the convenience is worth jumping ship for, but for now, I’m pretty impressed.

It needs a dark mode, though.

#RSS #tools #WordPress

[wjmaggos@liberal.city]

@pauloflaherty.com

but I see #ActivityPub as the evolution of RSS. we need readers with TTS that connect to our decentralized social graph. queue up what we've bookmarked in a mastodon app and what's most popular with the people we follow. let us boost from the app. etc.

I've switched to @wallabag post Pocket and love it but really wish it could do all that.

[pauloflaherty.com@pauloflaherty.com]

@wjmaggos

Not entirely sure about that William, at least for me. I’m more interested in content ingest.

I’m not a fan of “boosting”, “reposting”, or whatever each network calls it without additional steps. It’s actually one of the problems I see with social media in that it’s too easy to amplify content without adding anything (thought included) to the conversation.

I do agree that I would love to have a system whereby my social graph, and content is available for ingestion, and I can write about it and post to a blogging platform, or mastadon, all from the one place. That would be awesome :)

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[wjmaggos@liberal.city]

@pauloflaherty.com

but how did you find out about that RSS feed etc?

imo the boost is what makes it social media. we decide together what deserves attention, without it ever being forced on us. we only see it if somebody we follow boosted it. virality based on consent.

the alternative is great stuff reaches a few very slowly while big media owners and advertisers dominate our public mind.

(I agree with not boosting it until you've actually read it etc.)

#DemocracyOfReach