Looking back on Open RSS in 2024

A year of growth, resilience, and transparency

In 2024, more people began using Open RSS than ever before. The overwhelming amount of adoption of the RSS feeds was nothing short of amazing! But it was also a year where we had to make some difficult, but critical, decisions. As resources were pushed to the max, we needed to swiftly adjust our priorities, and scale our organization's infrastructure to accommodate the increased usage. And even in the midst of it all, we still remained laser-focused on our mission.

We not only continued to make as many RSS feeds available for as many websites as possible, but we also pushed for more adoption of RSS feeds, educated the public on their benefits, and promoted their advantages. We praised websites when they supported RSS feeds for their users, and exposed them when their silly shenanigans stifled their reach.

As users inquired about how our organization works, we dedicated a lot of time throughout the year implementing improvements to our website and messaging to make it all clear. This enhanced level of transparency better informed our supporters on how we operate and addressed any questions around how we plan to deliver on our mission.

For those that may not be familiar, we at Open RSS are a nonprofit organization. Our mission is to help people ditch the manipulative "feeds" we see on the websites and social media platforms we visit in favor of mentally healthier feeds that only they control.

We do this by providing alternative feeds for any website using an openly available technology called RSS. You can then subscribe to any feed for any website to get the same content on the website—but just in a feed that you can view in any application of your choosing. This lets you follow a website's content in a feed that only you control instead of the "feed" on the website, which is controlled by companies and full of tracking algorithms meant to trigger and manipulate you.

If you love what we're doing, please consider making a donation. It's a great way to further our mission and help us pay for the resources necessary to make a larger impact on the world.

This year Open RSS generated 78,908 feeds, which includes feeds requested by our donors, feeds requested by the public, and feeds automatically generated by the service. To promote RSS feeds even further, we published some articles on our blog that were liked, shared across social media, and sparked lively discussion across forums.

• Our Full text in RSS feeds, please article encourages websites to include the full-text in the articles published in their RSS feeds instead of just the headlines and short summaries.

• We wrote about the issue with Cloudflare's security feature, which is supposedly meant to protect websites, but really just ends up blocking RSS readers.

• Seeing Bluesky launch their own RSS feeds for their users was great, so we gave major kudos.

• The Vivaldi web browser adding support for its users to customize their RSS feed subscriptions was a note-worthy effort worth sharing.

The year started off light, but that soon ended after usage of the service began to increase. We ended up having our website go offline, feeds intermittently becoming unresponsive, and having to deal with attacks to our servers that nearly made the entire service unusable.

It became clear that the way we were operating was insufficient, and some changes needed to be made. So we bought more servers, harden our security and operations, and improved our infrastructure to be more resilient. This included identifying malicious bots and attackers, implementing measures to stop their abusive behavior at scale, and preventing our service from being compromised ever again.

As more people began discovering our work, there were quite a few questions around the organization, its structure, and its mission. So we spent a lot of the year focusing on improvements that added more transparency around what we do.

• We started publishing notes from our Board meetings that include critical points of discussion and key decisions.

• As a part of our fiduciary responsibilities, we published our organizational documents that include our Articles of Incorporation, Bylaws, Nonprofit determination letter and other supplemental documents.

• We began logging and publishing issues users brought to us to document our work and to communicate our progress to a resolution.

Our work for the year included resolving issues with Open RSS feeds, making them easier to use, and assisting both users and developers to use the service to its full potential.

• Released a new section for feeds that we offer with step-by-step instructions on how to use them

• Improved the homepage by adding more details about Open RSS features and improving overall messaging for those who may not be as familiar with RSS feeds

• Redesigned the RSS feed preview pages to be simpler and more helpful when subscribing

• Added a new Guides section, where users can easily find out how to report issues, request new RSS feeds, and dive deeper into how Open RSS feeds work behind the scenes

• Published a Developer's Guide and worked directly with developers to address and resolve any issues to ensure Open RSS feeds work flawlessly in their readers

Last year, we learned a great deal about how Open RSS is being used and received a lot of great feedback on what users want to see. So 2025 will be the year we start implementing new features based on this newfound enlightenment, with many of them being exclusively available to our donors.

Of course, money isn't why we do what we do. But the funding from our donors is what helps with the rising costs as we scale the service to allow higher amounts of traffic and to accommodate so many users. While Open RSS feeds will always remain free and without creating any account, continuing the service wouldn't be possible without those who have been so altruistic and gracious to help fund our mission.

We believe that focusing on improving Open RSS specifically for existing and new donors will show our appreciation in a way that inspires their continued support. Because without it, our organization wouldn't be where it is today.

The team here at Open RSS wants to thank everyone who has and continues to support us. What we do here is no easy feat, and our work wouldn't have been possible without it. We're extremely grateful for all the overwhelmingly positive feedback we've received so far, as it gives us a lot of hope that what we're doing is working and helps us to keep going strong!

With your help, we were able to deliver so many great things to you in 2024. And the best is yet to come.