standard.site, RSS, rssCloud, and FeedLand

No repository file, test, or entry point is named. First clarify whether this issue requests publishing or revising this comparison, and where that content should live; done should mean an agreed destination, scope, and reviewed documentation covering standard.site, RSS, rssCloud, and FeedLand.

It's time for me to learn what standard.site is and how it compares to the things I know and work with. This is the result of the conversation I had this morning with ChatGPT.

standard.site, RSS, rssCloud, and FeedLand

standard.site is a set of AT Protocol lexicons for representing publications and long-form documents. In practical terms, it gives ATProto apps a standard JSON record shape for things that look a lot like blogs, articles, essays, and posts. The main records are site.standard.publication for the site/publication and site.standard.document for individual documents.

A simple way to understand it:

Thing	standard.site	Rough RSS equivalent
Publication/site	site.standard.publication	RSS <channel>
Document/post	site.standard.document	RSS <item>
Realtime discovery	ATProto firehose	rssCloud pings / feed polling
Identity	DID / handle / PDS	Feed URL, site URL, domain
Data format	ATProto JSON records	XML feed
Main ecosystem	ATProto / Atmosphere apps	Web feed readers, aggregators, FeedLand

Simple publication record:

{
	"$type": "site.standard.publication",
	"url": "https://scripting.com",
	"name": "Scripting News",
	"description": "Dave Winer's weblog",
	"preferences": {
		"showInDiscover": true
		}
}

Simple document record:

{
	"$type": "site.standard.document",
	"site": "at://did:plc:example/site.standard.publication/scripting",
	"path": "/2026/05/30/example.html",
	"title": "An example post",
	"description": "A short post used as an example.",
	"publishedAt": "2026-05-30T14:00:00.000Z",
	"tags": ["blogging", "atproto"],
	"textContent": "This is the plain text of the post."
}

The closest summary is:

standard.site is RSS-shaped publishing metadata for the ATProto world.

That does not mean it is “just RSS.” The important difference is where the metadata lives and how software discovers it.

RSS says:

the web is the publishing system
feeds describe what changed
readers subscribe to feeds
rssCloud can make updates realtime

standard.site says:

ATProto is the metadata system
publication and document records live in PDS repos
indexers watch the ATProto firehose
documents may point back to canonical web pages

That gives standard.site some real advantages for people already working in ATProto.

Advantage	Why it matters
ATProto-native records	Apps can consume records from the ATProto network without inventing another bridge.
Shared schemas	Multiple apps can agree on the same publication/document structure.
DID-based identity	Posts are attached to an ATProto identity, not only a feed URL.
Firehose indexing	Indexers can discover records as they appear in the ATProto stream.
App interoperability	Publishing apps, readers, search tools, and recommendation tools can work from the same record types.
Social graph potential	Subscriptions, recommendations, moderation, replies, and related social features can be built in ATProto-native ways.

But FeedLand plus rssCloud already has a different kind of firehose: a realtime web-feed system based on RSS feeds and rssCloud notifications.

Piece	FeedLand / rssCloud	standard.site / ATProto
Source of truth	RSS/Atom feeds on the web	ATProto records in PDSes
Update signal	rssCloud pings, plus polling where needed	ATProto firehose
Canonical identity	Site URL, feed URL, item guid/permalink	DID, AT URI, handle
Reader/indexer model	Subscribe to feeds, receive pings, build rivers	Watch firehose, index records
Web-native	Yes, directly	Partly; may point to canonical web pages
Requires new account system	No	Yes, for native participation
Existing publisher base	Very large, because feeds already exist	Smaller, because sites must publish ATProto records
Social layer	Can be built from feeds, OPML, users, categories, sharing	Built around ATProto data and graph conventions

So standard.site is not the first firehose for web-like publishing. It is a firehose-oriented publishing format for ATProto.

FeedLand’s position is different:

FeedLand treats the web itself as the social web.

That means:

blogs
feeds
podcasts
news sites
personal sites
RSS
Atom
rssCloud
OPML

The claim is not that FeedLand replaces social networks. The claim is that the web already has many of the pieces of a social network:

The web already has identity: URLs.
The web already has publishing: sites.
The web already has syndication: RSS and Atom.
The web can have realtime updates: rssCloud.
The web already has subscription lists: OPML.
FeedLand ties these together into a social system.

The clearest contrast:

standard.site builds a publishing layer inside ATProto.

FeedLand builds a social layer out of the web.

Both approaches are coherent.

standard.site is attractive if you believe ATProto should become a common substrate for publishing metadata, discovery, identity, and social interaction. It gives developers in that ecosystem a common record format and a way to index long-form content from the firehose.

RSS/rssCloud/FeedLand is attractive if you believe the open web should remain the substrate, and that the job is to connect existing feeds, sites, readers, subscription lists, realtime notifications, and people without moving the metadata into a new identity and storage system.

The tradeoff is pretty direct:

Question	RSS/rssCloud/FeedLand answer	standard.site answer
Where does publishing live?	On the web	In ATProto records, often pointing to the web
What must publishers adopt?	Feeds, and optionally rssCloud	ATProto identity, PDS records, standard.site lexicons
What is the discovery layer?	Feed subscription, OPML, FeedLand, rssCloud, search	ATProto firehose and indexers
What is the biggest advantage?	Works with the existing web and feed ecosystem	Native to ATProto identity, schemas, and firehose
What is the biggest weakness?	Feed discovery and rssCloud support are uneven	Requires adoption of a newer network layer

A fair one-sentence summary:

standard.site is an ATProto-native way to do something RSS has long done for the web: describe publications and documents so readers, indexers, and social tools can discover and distribute them.

And the corresponding FeedLand summary:

FeedLand is a realtime social layer for the web’s existing feed ecosystem, using RSS, Atom, rssCloud, OPML, and web URLs as the foundation.