The power of open formats

Andrew Hickey is one of my favorite bloggers, and it’s somewhat weird because..

• He blogs on Bluesky but it works because..
• John Spurlock added RSS 2.0 feeds for Bluesky, built on their API, I am able to subscribe Hickey’s observations in FeedLand, because..
• Of course FeedLand understands RSS.

And it all happened without getting complicated. No federation needed. Just plain old RSS.

https://feedland.com/?river=https://rss.firesky.tv/?filter=from:andrewhickey.bsky.social

Of course FeedLand is not the only service that understands RSS 2.0. That’s why it’s such a silo buster and user empowerer.

I am lobbying everyone I know to add great feed support to social media systems, so we can get out of the mode of dominant platforms before Threads becomes the dominant platform.

PS: Yes, I’ve heard Threads plans to peer with Mastodon and other ActivityPub-compatible services, but I’m from Missouri, and I’ve given FB a lot of chances, and they always blow off open formats when they can, so why would one think this time would be different?