Dave Winer, creator of RSS 2.0, built RSS Chat using open web standards to create a simple way to chat and follow conversations.
Dave Winer, the person who made Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0) the standard for following blogs in feed readers, asked whether RSS could be used for online chat, and quickly concluded that it could.
Using a combination of open web standards, RSS 2.0, OPML, Markdown, SQL, and WebSocket, Winer created RSS Chat. Winer said the part that makes it RSS-based is that every user has an RSS feed with all their posts, the whole community has an RSS feed, [and] there is an OPML file that list all the users. Winer described how he hopes people will use it:
I envision a world of small communities, running on small servers. We haven’t released the code for this yet, but will, under an MIT license.
Dave Winer, Introducing rss.chat
The rss.chat site shows public chats using the new approach that look similar to social media posts and support message threads.
A public exchange on rss.chat between Don Park and Dave Winer, showing the threaded, social-media-style layout of RSS Chat posts.
The magic of RSS Chat is that it takes something that’s historically been complex and turns it into a simple, functional, and open way to chat and follow conversations. It will be interesting to watch this evolve and see whether, as with the success of RSS, netizens end up adopting it.
Jon Henshaw is the founder of Coywolf and an industry veteran with almost three decades of SEO, digital marketing, and web technologies experience. Follow @jon@henshaw.social