With OPML, you don’t need separate applications or services to categorize feeds. Categorization can be achieved within a single OPML file through its outlining capabilities or by managing multiple OPML files, each dedicated to a different category or use-case. It is a very viable workflow to have one OPML file for your YouTube subscriptions, another for your favorite Twitter/X and Mastodon users, one more for news sites, and yet another for personal blogs — the world’s your oyster. However, there aren’t many application that support nested OPML outlines or categorizing based on different files, sadly, but there should be! This is a call to action, developers: Perfect side-project!
Beyond personal convenience, OPML has the potential to better the ecosystem of the small web. By not only sharing an RSS feed on your personal website, but also your list of subscribed feeds, we’re effectively creating a recommendation system that is based on concious curation, not statistical metrics.
