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Blueprint for unbundled web
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j
So I've had the publishing + reading + discussion (+ maybe aggregation) model for a while. That's a very high level view--the next question is, what does the next layer down look like? What are the essential features that those apps should implement so they can work well together and stuff? Besides implementing these features in my own apps, I want to have a concise list of recommendations for other people who want to make "unbundled" apps, so sticking to the essentials is doubly important. Here's what I'm thinking currently off the top of my head: 1. discussion apps should let you fetch all the posts from communities that you're in 2. reader apps should use #1 to provide a single feed/whatever with posts from all the communities that you're in 3. publishing apps should use #1 to provide a second RSS feed containing all your posts from communities that you're in. (The "social RSS feed") I'm taking it for granted that the first RSS feed contains your own blog/newsletter posts 4. reader apps should handle subscribing to websites that have multiple RSS feeds I would say: subscribe to all the feeds immediately, and show a list of all the feeds that were subscribed to so the user can easily unsubscribe from any that they don't want 5. reader apps should be designed with both "regular" RSS feeds and "social" RSS feeds in mind. There are plenty of ways this could be done. Main thing is just that the user experience shouldn't break down if you subscribe to a bunch of very frequent feeds. 6. reader apps should provide an "open this website in " feature to make subscribing easy Users shouldn't need to know what RSS is. Ideally, provide browser extensions, and add an item to mobile devices' sharing menus. Teach users that when they see a "subscribe to this newsletter" email field, they can instead use the "open in " thing
I'm not sure if I'd consider this essential or not, but: 7. reader apps should let you create a list of recommended feeds This should be tied to the reader app's signup flow so that even people who don't know what RSS is can sign up for recommended feeds easily. e.g. you could have a "profile page" on your reader app which displays a list of your recommended feeds. When people visit that page, they can select/deselect feeds, enter their email address, and click subscribe. Doing so will both sign them up for the reader app and add the feeds to their account. There should also be a "Download OPML" for people who want to subscribe with a different reader app. The OPML file should omit any feeds that have been deselected. Each feed should also be listed individually in the page's metadata. Then any other reader apps which implement #4 and #6 can subscribe to each other's recommendations easily, without even needing to download the OPML (and without users needing to even know what OPML is) Actually I think this is definitely essential. This is how we onboard people into the unbundled web/make RSS mainstream. 8. publishing apps should help promote your recommendations For example: reader apps which implement #7 can also allow the recommendations page to be embedded. after you subscribe to someone's newsletter, their site can then display their recommendations in an iframe so you can subscribe to them with the reader app. Or maybe the reader app lets you customize the recommendations page enough so that you can use it as a welcome page, and just redirect to it after someone subscribes to your newsletter. We also want to support the same kind of flow for people who already use a reader app. Maybe we just include all the recommended feeds in your page's metadata. If someone does "open in " on your website, then they'll see your main feed, your social feed, and then all your recommended feeds.
This all lays a nice foundation for aggregators as well. The recommended feeds especially would be great for crawlers.
lol all the numbers in the first post show up as "1" on my phone I hate that about markdown
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