It has been 12 years since Google shut down Google Reader, its popular RSS news reader. The rise of social media newsfeeds had rendered RSS useless for many people, and declining usage led Google to sunset it. But RSS feeds never went away. Many websites still make them available; they’re baked into most blogging utilities; and podcasting relies heavily on RSS feeds for distribution of audio and video files. As algorithms determine what you see in social networks, and newsletter subscriptions require visits to your inbox, where your newsletters are mixed in with all your other emails, RSS news readers are making a comeback. New news readers are emerging, and older ones are making improvements with a range of features, including the incorporation of AI to assist with sorting and other tasks. In this short midweek FIR episode, Neville and Shel explore the benefits of RSS, examine some of the features of the latest crop of readers, and discuss how an RSS resurgence can benefit communicators. Links from this episode: Curate your own newspaper with RSS Reddit RSS discussion Why RSS Feeds Are Still Relevant in 2025 The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, August 25. We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com. Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music. You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients. Raw Transcript: Shel Holtz (00:01) Hi everybody and welcome to episode number 475 of Four Immediate Release. I’m Shel Holtz. @nevillehobson (00:09) and I’m Neville Hobson. At the dawn of blogging 25 years ago, RSS was a quiet revolution. It let anyone subscribe to a blog or a podcast and receive updates instantly. No gatekeepers, no ads, no algorithms deciding what you should see. Just a simple feed, delivering content directly to your reader of choice. Fast forward to today and the digital landscape could hardly be more different. Our online experiences are now shaped by social media algorithms. filtered through engagement metrics and interrupted by endless distractions. Many people have never even heard of RSS and those who do often assume it’s long gone. But here’s the twist, it never went away. And according to writer and technologist Molly White