JSON (or arbitrary payloads) and "fat pings". The point of my remark is that as long as feeds are a first-class citizen of PubSubHubbub, it will remain within the limited subset of people interested in both feeds and realtime/webhooks -- which *is* limited because most people interested in feeds are fine with feeds as they are, and those interested in webhooks don't want anything to do with feeds.
I've heard of a lot of people turn to PubSubHubbub looking for something to help with webhooks, and then end up ignoring it or using pieces of it, a la Facebook and Instagram (and GitHub is considering doing the same). This is also the reason I started losing interest in it -- feeds have nothing to do with the problem I wanted it to solve. I'd love to talk about this at the next Evented Web meetup next month. You're all invited. My remark was partly inspired by Instagram, and partly from the discussion at tonight's meeting. -jeff On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 11:37 PM, Brett Slatkin <[email protected]> wrote: > Yeah definitely cool stuff! > > For starters, this highlights the need for formalized JSON support in > the Hubbub spec. I think this is something we need to get ironed out > by May 1st (and publish v4 of the spec). How does that sound to you > folks? > > The other shortcomings they've worked around (or left out) are like > what Facebook did for their API. Namely, putting extra parameters in > the subscription request as additional search of filter requirements. > After almost a year since Facebook launched their API that uses a > subset of PubSubHubbub > (http://developers.facebook.com/docs/api/realtime/), it's safe to say > that this too is a common idiom we should merge as well. > > > > Related, I believe Instagram's release precipitated Jeff's comment > (http://twitter.com/progrium/statuses/41010799010910208): > > "PubSubHubbub will fail because most people are fine with feeds and > everybody else into webhooks will skip feeds entirely." > > > I think this misses the point. The community at large creates > standards and embraces de facto standards because they vastly simplify > our lives. Feeds (ie, XML-based formats) have been helpful to that > end, but they're showing their age. JSON is simpler in a whole bunch > of ways. There are important parts of Feeds (eg, idempotent IDs) that > could be carried over to the JSON formats and help everyone. > Similarly, these JSON webhook APIs have reused the registration style > of PubSubHubbub because it's a common idiom that's beneficial to > developers and solves common problems in a familiar way. > > > So I think the useful take-away is we should get down to business soon > and formalize PubSubHubbub for JSON and alternative content types. > > -Brett > > > > On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 2:25 PM, John Panzer <[email protected]> wrote: >> +100! >> -- >> John Panzer / Google >> [email protected] / abstractioneer.org / @jpanzer >> >> >> On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 2:05 PM, Julien Genestoux >> <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> Great news! >>> Instagram launched its realtime API and it's based on PubSubHubbub :) >>> Cheers! >>> Ju >> > -- Jeff Lindsay http://progrium.com
