Atom vs RSS?

March 3, 2004 2:24 AM

I see on the sideblog that MetaFiler now has an atom feed.

What exactly can I do with that? And how is it different/better that the RSS feed?
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood to MetaFilter-Related at 2:24 AM (12 comments total)

As a content subscriber, the Atom feed doesn't offer any visible benefit over the RSS (not to mention that the Atom feed isn't valid :-).

For content publishers Atom is supposed to offer a much nicer mapping between blog contents (web/syndication feeds) and blog editing tools. But it's fairly young and we'll have to wait and see how it pans out.
posted by LukeyBoy at 3:25 AM on March 3, 2004

With an Atom Feed, you can print out your own copy of "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer"
posted by seanyboy at 5:15 AM on March 3, 2004

For right now, it's got just about the same stuff as the RSS feed, but eventually will have a lot more.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:02 AM on March 3, 2004

seanyboy made a funny.
posted by Hackworth at 10:45 AM on March 3, 2004

...eventually will have a lot more

Tantalising.

While I've vaguely enjoyed the spectacle of grown men and women getting their knickers in such an almighty twist over syndication formats, it's never really been clear to me what advantages Atom offers readers/subscribers over the various types of RSS - looks like I'll have to keep an eye on the MetaFilter feed to find out.
posted by jack_mo at 10:53 AM on March 3, 2004

For now the advantages are slim, since it's still new and the spec is being worked out. The only differences currently for the atom feed are item level timestamps and edit stamps and usernames are carried in atom as well. The bulk of atom work is on the API, which I doubt mefi will use, but that's where the real magic lies.

I created the feed mostly as a proof-of-concept, to see how hard it was to do. It took about 15 minutes and runs fine on its own (after I fixed the bug that made for non-standard feeds today).
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:36 PM on March 3, 2004

Up an at them!
[/McBain]
posted by MzB at 1:09 PM on March 3, 2004

I've recently been using BlogLines to organize and read all my blogs including MeFi.. which means I never need to see the blue of MeFi anymore if I dont want too.. which makes reading a lot faster and easier and allows reading more blogs.. but I wonder how this will impact the blog providers. There is a loss of community when you strip off MeFi's design structure to just get to the FPP content, yet RSS is almost required in order to keep up with reading lots of blogs. I have not looked into Atom but my guess is it will allow the blog providers to push a lot more content and style in the feed to create the value add and make it more than just an AP/UPI like feed.
posted by stbalbach at 2:13 PM on March 3, 2004

I will second bloglines.com. Great, great service. Lots of really cool features. I keep it open all-day long.
posted by gen at 6:17 PM on March 3, 2004

Third.

I've actually gone back to reading weblogs other than my own and a couple of pals', thanks to Bloglines. Lotsa good shit out there.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:38 PM on March 3, 2004

I'd argue that while Atom might not add too much value for Joe or Jane Enduser, including usernames with each post allows people to syndicate their own FPP's to their personal blogs a lot more easily, and hopefully means sites that auto-syndicate entire MeFi posts will now credit them.

In short, I wuv my new pony and I'm gonna wuv it forever and feed it and brush it every day and...
posted by arto at 10:45 PM on March 3, 2004

As we progress with the Atom project, you'll find the best information for getting started with Atom at the AtomEnabled.org site.
posted by anildash at 2:43 AM on March 8, 2004