feedle - It’s a World of Feeds!

I have recently helped a team bring a new side project to the world - feedle. I could talk for hours about the tech stack we chose for the backend (Java and Quarkus) or how we built a fluid UI with close to zero Javascript (thanks to HTMX). I could, and I probably will, in an upcoming blog post.

The thing I like most about feedle is that it is about making RSS feeds more accessible to the general public. And not just any RSS feeds. The team has decided to carefully curate what goes inside the index, focusing on the content by individuals and small organizations (startups, collectives, teams, etc.) first.

But what is feedle after all? It is a dedicated search engine for blogs and podcasts - anything with a public RSS feed. What makes it unique is that every search on feedle is also its own RSS feed. This allows visitors to subscribe to topics of interest rather than hundreds of individual feeds.

feedle solves two immediate problems. For people new to RSS feeds, it’s an easy way to discover exciting content through topics that matter. For the blog and podcast creators, this means reaching out to a potential audience they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to. feedle makes it transparent where each post comes from. The belief is that once people catch up with someone’s content through a topic of interest, they will eventually sign up for their blog or podcast directly.

In times when centralized social media dominates public attention, it is easy to skew people’s opinion or to incentivize certain types of content. Thus, it is more important than ever to support those willing to share their opinion by their means, using open and transparent protocols.