RSS

Two April 2026 stories on Flipboard Surf mark RSS’s return to coverage as a component of custom, cross-network feeds rather than a standalone publishing product.

Who they are

RSS is an open web-feed format, associated in the coverage with Dave Winer’s role in its creation and with the distribution layer for podcasts, publishers, and social content. Stories treat it less as a conventional company than as infrastructure that platforms such as Spotify, Facebook, Google and newer feed apps can support, package, or bypass.

The recent arc

Coverage peaked in 2021 around podcast platforms incorporating RSS: Facebook let podcasters link feeds to its platform, Spotify expanded subscriptions for Anchor shows available through RSS and Spotify, and Google tested a Chrome Follow feature for RSS-enabled sites. That phase positioned the format as a practical bridge between creator-controlled distribution and major consumer platforms, alongside headlines about Amazon’s Wondery acquisition and Google Podcasts’ eventual move toward YouTube Music support for podcasts and RSS feeds.

More recent stories shift from platform integration to feed aggregation and open-social interoperability. The Iconfactory’s February 2025 launch of Tapestry put Bluesky, Mastodon and RSS into one timeline; Flipboard’s April 2026 launch of Surf similarly combines Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, RSS, podcasts and YouTube. The surrounding coverage of Twitter restricting logged-out web viewing, Meta ending news access in Canada, and Bluesky adding a public web view reinforces why portable or publicly readable feeds have become a recurring frame.

The tension

The central tension is between RSS’s open, user-directed distribution model and the centralized information silos that Motherboard argued displaced it in mainstream use. Twitter and Facebook feature prominently in that contrast, while Bluesky and Mastodon, plus products such as Tapestry and Surf, represent an effort to make disparate networks and feeds usable together without making a single platform the sole gateway.

Why it matters

If aggregators continue treating RSS as one input alongside federated social networks, podcasts and video, the format could retain strategic importance as a common layer for portable feeds even without regaining its former mainstream identity. The uncertainty is whether these apps can turn that interoperability into durable consumer behavior, or whether platform-controlled discovery and access rules will again keep audiences inside proprietary services.

Related: Twitter · Facebook · Google · Spotify · Bluesky · Mastodon