Open RSS

Providing RSS feeds and missing features

Despite RSS feeds being available since 1999, many websites don't offer them. And the websites that do often have feeds that are broken or missing critical features. Open RSS's mission is to provide RSS content for these websites, so that RSS feeds can continue to be a reliable way for internet users to stay up to date with content throughout the web. We hope that making feeds available for websites that don't have them will encourage their usage and adoption as a more private and personalized alternative to overwhelming email newsletter subscriptions and doom-scrolling social media feeds that are controlled and monitored by big technology companies.

Keeping RSS free

RSS feeds are (and always have been) an open standard and were always meant to be free. However, certain companies have attempted to capitalize off the lack of RSS feed implementations and support. Open RSS aims to provide RSS feeds as a free alternative to those that are monetized and dissuade companies for charging for RSS feed services. With the exclusion of paid content, you should never be charged for the availability of an RSS feed for content on a website that is otherwise publicly available.

Pushing back on efforts to kill RSS usage

To make as much money as possible, big technology companies must track your habits and interests, boost the time your eyes are on their websites, or overwhelm you with ads to pay their advertisers. Because RSS feeds are a big threat to their "money-first" model, they've increasingly become unsupportive of providing and promoting RSS feeds. It's the reason Google killed Google Reader, and it's RSS support in Google Groups, LinkedIn killed RSS feeds--the list goes on.

Educating users

A growing number of website owners don't know how best to implement RSS feeds for their visitors, and many people don't know how to use them or are even aware that they exist. So, we're going to help change that by sharing knowledge of the importance of RSS feeds and why they should be used.