What is the notification system used?
The technology used is called rssCloud. rssCloud is a notification protocol that uses a “cloud” element in a RSS feed. This element contains information on a cloud server that is supporting this feed. A feed reader app can read the RSS feed and register with the server listed in the cloud element to be notified when the feed updates. The producer of the RSS feed can then “ping” the server to let it know that updates are available, and the server can inform apps that registered the feed that updates are available. The cloud element was included in version 2.0 of the RSS specification.
How can I get started?
There are a variety of writing and reading tools available, and integration of other tools is in progress. The tool catalog shows a list of writing and reading tools available that support the rssCloud protocol, and the requirements for installing each tool. You can click on the links in the tool catalog table to find help on installing and using the tools.
Why isn’t (fill-in-the-blank social media tool) listed?
None of those tools support the rssCloud protocol at this time. Mastodon and Bluesky have support for RSS feeds, but those tools do not include the <cloud> element in their feeds, and they do not support notification via a rssCloud server when a user creates a new post. As other tool vendors add support for rssCloud, they will be added to the Feed Network tool list.
How do I know if a feed supports rssCloud?
Open the feed in a text editor, and search for “<cloud>”. If that text is there, there will be an address for a rssCloud server, and the URL for that feed can be added to a reader tool that uses rssCloud for real-time notification. If the <cloud> element is not present in the feed, that feed does not support the rssCloud protocol, and will not provide real-time notification of new posts.
How is reading a RSS feed supporting rssCloud different from reading a RSS feed that does not support rssCloud?
For a valid RSS feed, the <cloud> element is optional. The <cloud> element benefit is that it enables real-time notification. Any RSS feed can be read in a feed reader, but feed reader apps that support feeds with the <cloud> element can provide real-time notification to the user that a feed has new content (instead of waiting for 5-10 minutes before the feed reader updates again).
Why call this “The Feed Network”?
Good question! This site uses the term “The Feed Network” because it documents tools and services that use RSS feeds to power the backbone of a social network, instead of other protocols like ActivityPub or AT Protocol. By using RSS feeds, which are already deployed in systems and websites around the world, users can interact with each other without a centralized service having to connect them.
Why hasn’t this gained traction before now?
The protocol has been supported in the blogging tools that Dave Winer developed since 2001 (Radio Userland (feed reader/blogging) and Manila (blogging)). Since that time, several other tools added support for adding the cloud element to RSS feeds (Django, Perl XML-RSS, and syndic-rss2). Support for rssCloud in RSS feeds was deployed in WordPress.com sites in 2009, with a plugin for WordPress.org sites released shortly after that. However, for the most part, only feed readers and apps developed by Dave Winer supported the protocol (River2 (OPML Editor app), River4 and River5 (Node.js apps), Radio3 (Node.js) and now FeedLand (Node.js)). This site is an effort to highlight this technology and get more interest.