Note on the Future of RSS Feeds

These days, I see a decline in the publication of RSS feeds. Either they're not present, not advertised much, or incomplete. This is especially true of mainstream, non-professional sites.

One of the reasons that might lead bloggers and webmasters to remove or neglect RSS feeds is that they provide no way to count followers (unique followers). A good evolution off RSS would be to allow a simple "declarative" download of RSS feeds.

• Authentication might be hard to obtain and maintain.
• Identified-only feeds might make users reluctant to use them.
• "Declaration" of an identifier of the follower is subject to many uncertainties, but could allow for a better count of unique users, returning users, etc.