> It doesn't seem radically different from any of thousands of news aggregator type web sites, including HN.
RSS lets me subscribe to everything jfengel (say) posts, not just the minority of jfengel posts that make it onto HN. That matters for those who are jfengel fans.
Edit: of course, it's also useful if jfengel only posts about once a month. You don't want to miss anything, but neither do you want to visit the blog every day to see if there's something new. Facebook is terrible at this -- I regularly find that I've missed something that a friend who is an occasional FB user has posed.
>of course, it's also useful if jfengel only posts about once a month.
I think that's the point a number of people on this thread are missing. Newsletters, for example, are fine if there are a handful of people who publish regularly/frequently who you want to follow. They're less useful if you want to follow what 50 people who may only publish something once a month are writing.
RSS lets me subscribe to everything jfengel (say) posts, not just the minority of jfengel posts that make it onto HN. That matters for those who are jfengel fans.
Edit: of course, it's also useful if jfengel only posts about once a month. You don't want to miss anything, but neither do you want to visit the blog every day to see if there's something new. Facebook is terrible at this -- I regularly find that I've missed something that a friend who is an occasional FB user has posed.