NetNewsWire is at the top of Hacker News right now. It’s a familiar name; with a quick Google Search, I dug up an article I wrote over a decade ago for Guiding Tech that mentioned it. I didn’t have a Mac yet—I do now though, so I’m finally trying it again.

It’s nice, and I’m getting into the groove of it. In my days as a writer at Lifehacker, one of my editors had suggested this reading system by Farhad Manjoo; try as I may, I never got around to it—I still haven’t made a habit of checking it often enough. So maybe this will be a nice new way for me to keep on top of things.

More importantly, what I appreciate about this is the possibility it offers.

Even years after its decline, a lot of people miss RSS. Perhaps it died because the big companies couldn’t figure out how to monetize it; perhaps that was also the reason people still feel so strongly towards it.

If you miss something, the best way to bring it back is to spend time with it. For example, if you miss the dialogue that blogs had, set up a blog and start again. If you miss RSS, try NetNewsWire, or Feedly, or the many other RSS services again. The more of us that do this, the more products people will make to develop space and support RSS again. Trends—or so-called “vibe shifts” don’t start by themselves; people—you and I—start them.

(I haven’t figured out the perfect way to say this yet; the only way I will find that way is to keep saying it in different ways. So this is one attempt.)

See also Rob Walker’s Pay attention to what you care about; care about what you pay attention to.