All the makers/creators/hackers and alike, please ensure RSS functionality is enabled.

Let me explain why. With so much content produced on the internet these days it can be hard to keep up.  RSS was developed to solve this. It allows an individual to subscribe to a sites content feed, keeping them up to date.

Using a feed aggregator such as Feedly (happy paying member since the demise of Google Reader) gives you a personalised news paper at the start of every morning. Someones blog may not have any new content for years, but being subscribed via RSS notifies me of new content. Honestly those who post infrequently usually provide the most value in their content.

There has been a steadily growing trend of new web presences not supporting RSS. This worries me as I wont visit 100’s of websites each morning to check if there is new content. Feedly does a decent job of describing the state of my feeds, every year these numbers seem to increase (this screenshot was taken after I cleaned up my library):

Some will argue that pulling content from a website into a feed aggregator robs them of the opportunity to generate revenue. I can relate, running a website isn’t free but at least provide a short summary so if interested we can visit the content page.

Please double check your web presence for functioning RSS feeds. It makes us happy. :)