Yesterday I wondered aloud why RSS readers look like email clients.
@brentsimmons replied. Turns out he borrowed that layout for NetNewsWire in 2002 — and twenty years later, he's asking why no one's tried something different.
That conversation became an essay. I built a visual version (with an ASCII fallback).
terrygodier.com/phantom-obliga…
#rss
Jens Finkhäuser
in reply to tg • • •I like the article, but it's also subtly wrong, or wrong-ish in one aspect.
In the era of personal blogs, it was (and is) common for people to respond to each other's posts. That's a conversation like one might have in email or paper mail, except it's public.
This doesn't apply to any other kind of RSS feed in the same way, of course.
So it's not just about metaphors that lose meaning when applied to a different context. It's also that UI sometimes blurs boundaries...
@brentsimmons
Jens Finkhäuser
in reply to Jens Finkhäuser • • •@tg... that perhaps shouldn't be.
For example, I keep pointing out the sofa analogy for social media. It's all presented as if it's on our own sofa, but it's the same for everyone. So comments on another person's posts can feel like a thing done in private to the writer, and an intrusion of privacy to the author of the original post.
UI should IMHO help in separating such things.
@brentsimmons