All 100 ideasReading and news
#92 of 100 · Reading and news
RSS with friends
A layer for RSS readers that recommends related feeds, shares likes and stars from similar readers, or offers curated topic planets.
Asks per year
What the askers want
- Would pay12%
- Want it local or private0%
- Object to subscriptions0%
- Want it open source or self-hosted25%
- Want AI to do it25%
Share of the 8 asks that say so, as judged by Jev.
What exists on Show HN
Built, still asked for13 Show HN launches do this job, and 8 more do part of it. People still ask, so the launches are missed, unknown, or not what they want. Ask what they’re missing before you build.
- EvalRSS – A Social RSS Aggregator2021 · 28 pts
- Kalaksi: a social-network built on top of RSS2021 · 22 pts
- Yakread – An RSS reader powered by machine learning2023 · 18 pts
- From RSS to Social networks2015 · 13 pts
- Textcaster – social networking where RSS is the protocol2026 · 12 pts
- Trybsync – A Social RSS Aggregator2022 · 8 pts
- BlogFlock, a social RSS feed reader2025 · 6 pts
- Feeds Pub – a social RSS feed reader2020 · 4 pts
Instead of: Google Reader
The idea, as matched
A social layer for RSS that recommends related feeds, shares what like-minded readers liked or starred, or runs curated topic planets you can subscribe to, possibly federated.
Jev first matched 10 requests to this idea; a second reader kept 8 of 10.
Every ask, newest first
Each line is an AI paraphrase of what the writer wanted. The link goes to their own words on Hacker News.
- Apr 2026Wants more topic-specific blog aggregators like Planet sites, to subscribe to curated feeds on one subject. Read it: a comment in “Show HN: I built a frontpage for personal blogs”
- Jan 2025Wants a standard way to publish and consume feed 'likes' so a cohort's picks drive RSS recommendations. Read it: a comment in “I ditched the algorithm for RSS”
- Jan 2024Wants affordable ways to follow 1500+ small blogs, since per-feed polling services cost too much, perhaps through ActivityPub. Read it: a comment in “Show HN: I've Implemented a RSS Reader”
- Jan 2022Wants a service where they paste a feed list and get recommendations for related popular feeds. Read it: a comment in “I Miss RSS”
- Apr 2021Wants a ranking or discovery system for RSS feeds, like Castro for podcasts. Read it: a comment in “Ask HN: How would you make RSS feed readers better and increase adoption?”
- Mar 2021Wants a federated Google Reader clone hosting feed URLs, read state and a shareable starred feed. Read it: a comment in “RIP Google Reader”
- Aug 2020Wants social sites to provide open feeds so friends can share across any software. Read it: a comment in “RSSHub: Everything Is RSSible”
- Mar 2018Notes RSS lacks a social component and wants discussion around feed content. Read it: a comment in “It's time to head back to RSS?”
Building this?
Read ten of the asks above first, because they say what the existing launches miss. If you ship it, post it as a Show HN so the next run of this list finds it.
Ship it like Vercel, on a server you own
This site runs on ShipTiffin. A push to GitHub deploys it, the way it would on Vercel, but the server is a Hetzner box in your own account. Postgres, sign-in, email, jobs and analytics are already on it, every project gets a hard limit, and nothing is billed by usage.
$19 a month per box, plus about $10 for the server at Hetzner. Open source, so you can also run it yourself for free.