Circa and RSS

http://scripting.com/2014/07/23/wheresCircasRssFeed.html

For more than a year, I think, I've been accessing Circa news via their Twitter page.

https://twitter.com/CircaNews

But since I finally got with the times and acquired a smartphone last month, June 2014, I use the Circa app, and I enjoy it significantly better.

I believe Circa founded itself as a media org to be consumed on mobile devices, especially phones. Short, concise stories, sticking to facts. Snippets or cards.

I like Circa's idea and format. With the app, I can follow stories, such as the Malaysian airline shot down over Ukraine and the current Tour De France. Circa continues to update the original story as new information accumulates. The app sends a push notification about new updates to stories that I follow.

Before the app, I would have preferred a Circa RSS feed over their Twitter page. But with the iPhone app, I can't see any other way of consuming content from Circa, and I think that's what Circa intended. I won't get the same experience from an RSS feed, so I don't need it.

Vox updates pages. I need to see if they provide an app with push notifications for updates on stories that I'm interested in.

Updating the same page is nothing new. Wikipedia has done this for a while. It's nice to see media adopt the idea, instead of creating a new article every day for an on-going story because new information exists. And this new "article" will contain information mentioned in previous articles.

With digital, it makes more sense to update the original story.

If Circa provides an RSS feed, the feed would have to be based upon changes or modified date and not creation date. Otherwise, new updates to an old story will not appear in the feed.

The Circa Twitter page / feed lags well behind the content published through their mobile app, and this too is probably by design. And it's possible that not Circa story gets syndicated to their Twitter page. I'll look at this some more.

Anyway, for what Circa is trying to do, the mobile app experience is superior to a Twitter page and an RSS feed if it existed.

#media - #mobile - #app - #rss - #design