Dancing About Architecture: Microfeed for "More on Microfeeds"

More on Microfeeds

Tue, 08 Mar 2005 13:35:06 CDT

It has been a while since my last post on microfeeds, and not a lot has really changed -- except that they would be more useful than ever if we could figure out a way to consume them appropriately. I continue to offer microfeeds attached to each post that contains any comments for that post, but I'm not aware of any newsreader that recognizes the wfw:commentRSS element (each item in my feed uses that element to point to its microfeed). We've also seen interesting uses of RSS for things like FedEx package tracking, and there's an interesting proposal for using feeds to help deal with phishing scams. I'd love to have microfeeds for order tracking from a bunch of different online retailers. The problem is, of course, that the traditional feed reading clients don't really deal with microfeeds that well. Microfeeds might have a lifecycle associated with them ("Kill thyself after the package has been delivered"), they might not deserve the status of "channel" (toss a bunch of them into a single "order confirmations" channel), or they might just serve to support existing content that I've found interesting (like comments on an entry). "Feeds" are too bulky a concept in...

Comment from Randy Charles Morin

Tue, 08 Mar 2005 19:07:30 CDT

One thing a few of us reader developers discussed was throttling a feed when it becomes dormant. This helps bandwidth, but doesn't unsub.

The responsibility should be the publishers. When he wants you to unsub, he should respond 410.

I wrote a bit about this in my RSS Feed State article. Just type rss feed state at Google to get a link.

Comment from Phil Wilson

Wed, 09 Mar 2005 04:43:41 CDT

RSS Bandit definitely supports wfw:commentRSS, as does SharpReader. No others spring to mind, but I'm sure they're out there.

Randy's right though: the provider replacing the microfeed with a 410 should prompt the aggregator to unsubscribe.