Nostr Web Client

RSS is one of those humble protocols that glues the web. It was born out of the same values (openness, data portability, ...) that are the foundation of Nostr.

You may not be aware, but you can already export most of the content you create and publish today into an RSS feed.

- Most blog platforms allow users to make their content available as an RSS feed.

- Most bookmark services allow users to create an RSS feed from their bookmarks.

- Plenty of third-party services enable the creation of RSS feeds for your Twitter, Instagram, Facebook accounts (think RSS.app, IFTTT, ...).

- Most podcast platforms generate an RSS feed for your show.

- ...

On the other hand, Nostr is poised to become the new web infrastructure. It will dismantle the walled gardens we've been living in for too long and is already shaping an ecosystem of decentralized apps that will gradually replace centralized ones, one by one.

Connecting RSS and Nostr is obviously a necessary step to accelerate the transition toward this new web powered by Nostr. This Geyser Project (link below) aims to build the necessary momentum to create a tool that enables everyone to make the most of RSS in a Nostr world.

Applications are countless: just imagine turning the RSS feed of bookmarks about a specific topic into a nice stream of Nostr notes pushed to a specific npub profile, and then transformin those Nostr notes into a beautiful website built with nostr:nprofile1qy88wumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmv9uq3qamnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3wd4hk6tcqyqyw4hjsmaga5jjz7hwqgh34kdceqtsx665q2g2mas7h9hrg0n9sgfvzdyk .

⇒ Help me build rss2nostr!

I'm fully aware there are already a few tools out there attempting this, but all of them are quite limited in features or designed to only serve tech users.

What we need is a web app that allows users to:

- Submit the RSS feed they want to connect with Nostr

- Define rules and parameters for converting RSS items into Nostr events

- Specify the Nostr profile they would like to publish the events to

Furthermore, using a liberal open-source license, we may enable the development of competing/specialized web apps.

https://geyser.fund/project/rss2nostr?hero=marcobarulli

daniele 10mo ago

Lately I saw the opposite trend: some people want to follow Nostr on their RSS feed readers; the motivation is often simply that their RSS app is better. This clearly signals that Nostr apps are generally too much oriented to the microblogging social side, with a fast consumption attitude, and they lack tools to browse and surface content in a more slow way.

Said that, I don't think we should have a bridge that transforms RSS into notes, this would just lead to duplicate content, we need to develop applications that merge Nostr and RSS and offer a great UX for articles, so RSS lovers can start to taste the new world, and perhaps bribe their content creators to join Nostr.

https://github.com/fiatjaf/narr is a great step in this direction.

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Discussion

daniele 10mo ago

Well, nostr:npub18nagz6a53yh6d05e8trj487dhvyfhh4qchvsz87jqng4g4zl5tvs825evl about my last point: if the tool has the *content creators* as target, for example a Wordpress plugin that integrates with the RSS creation and generates Nostr events, it could absolutely be an interesting tool!

mbarulli 10mo ago

Exactly!

There are plenty of different kinds of RSS feed out there (news, podcast, jobs, product reviews, events, ...). Given the right tools, Nostr creators (that is everyone) could assemble RSS items into completely new "products".

E.g.: a Nostr-powered website that combines self-authored long form articles about a certain industry with news, events, and jobs from that same industry with a high degree of automation in the workflow.