[dispatch] Re: INDF - Subscription Account RSS/Atom feeds: request for other people to take care of this problem

[Jim Fenton <[e-mail]>]

On 19 Aug 2025, at 16:40, Rob Sayre wrote:

> Hi,
>
> My request is for the IETF to formulate a standard for feed and podcast
> clients to get /one/ notification of an update for all subscription URLs.
> This work has been done, I think. There are "Well Known URIs", "URI
> templates", and "Webhooks". Think of products like
> Patreon/Memberful/Substack etc.
>
> I would like my Podcast client to know there is a new episode right away
> (without having all clients poll at once--webhook). The current issue is
> that I get an email about a new episode, but since all of the subscription
> feed URLs are unique, all of those aren't polled right away.
>
> I'm not going to waltz in and write a draft to do this one. Other people
> have done most of the work. But ...could we do this? :)
>
> How about "INDF" for "indie feed?"

(without hat)

Hi Rob,

This seems to me to be a subset of a bigger problem. We need a way to opt in and  receive push notifications for all sorts of events, from tornado warnings to podcasts to (even) advertising without having to poll for them or depend on email delivery where delivery is questionable and the notifications get lost in a lot of noise.

I did a prototype of a notification system for things like this several years ago, and made a short presentation at HotRFC, but didn’t get much engagement so it got pushed down my priority list. I’d still like to do something about this problem. If you’re interested, I’m happy to chat offlist about it.

-Jim