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O Reader My Reader – Remembering Google Reader

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Re: O Reader My Reader – Remembering Google Reader

#61

Post by commentzorro »

interfixus wrote: post #47
commentzorro wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, people who come to a website via RSS almost universally have ad blockers turned on and usually are not site sticky. Maybe not the best group to attract to your site?

A discerning, technologically literate audience who never heard the term 'site sticky' before? No, you're right, no use for those.

A "discerning, technologically literate audience" is exactly who you don't want at your site -- for most non-technical sites. The person you want is some who really believes bud light tastes different than coors light. You want the person who will believe that a particular body spray is the only thing preventing them from meeting more men/women. These are the folks who pay the bills on the non-technical sites.

Re: O Reader My Reader – Remembering Google Reader

#62

Post by swah »

asymmetric wrote: post #13
interfixus wrote: post #11

There are decent readers out there. Liferea or Thunderbird will do in a pinch, and much as I hate to admit it, Netvibes is actually superb. The tragedy isn't some Google tool being retired, the tragedy is the way feeds are slowly disappearing. It's a slow and creeping death, but it's a death. More and more sites are dropping their feeds and replacing them with some twitterish Facebook nonsense. [edit: typo]

Agreed. Every time I see a feed disappear in favor of a Facebook/Twitter feed, my confidence in the future of the Internet drops a little bit..

And I open individual twitter accounts [1] from time to time and find all kind of interesting content - and a more pleasurable way to consume it.

[1] That I also follow but will miss from the timeline, of course.

Re: O Reader My Reader – Remembering Google Reader

#63

Post by matt4077 »

TorKlingberg wrote: post #51
interfixus wrote: post #11

There are decent readers out there. Liferea or Thunderbird will do in a pinch, and much as I hate to admit it, Netvibes is actually superb. The tragedy isn't some Google tool being retired, the tragedy is the way feeds are slowly disappearing. It's a slow and creeping death, but it's a death. More and more sites are dropping their feeds and replacing them with some twitterish Facebook nonsense. [edit: typo]

RSS feeds were just never easy enough for most people to bother. And not just the proverbial grandma, most techies don't use RSS either. Sites will run analytics and see that nobody is clicking the feed button. RSS certainly solves a real problem, so I think there is an opportunity for reinventing RSS with better UX. Don't ask me how though.

I don't know how you could improve the UX, considering most sites had an icon that directly linked to google reader. For a while, feed readers where also the app store category where all the innovation happened.

I don't want to live in the same internet as people who can't copy & paste an URL.

Re: O Reader My Reader – Remembering Google Reader

#64

Post by matt4077 »

kristianc wrote: post #60

RSS was and still is great for following a few blogs that were relatively infrequently updated. If I follow Rands, DF or Marco, it works quite well. I receive timely, relevant content at a pace I can cope with and digest. The problem with RSS is that it scales incredibly badly for large, content heavy sites. I don't really want to see everything that Gizmodo publishes. I certainly don't want to see everything that Hu…

That was always my policy: reader for those feeds I want to read every post of, visiting the websites for anything like the NYTimes.

Re: O Reader My Reader – Remembering Google Reader

#65

Post by Touche »

kristianc wrote: post #60

RSS was and still is great for following a few blogs that were relatively infrequently updated. If I follow Rands, DF or Marco, it works quite well. I receive timely, relevant content at a pace I can cope with and digest. The problem with RSS is that it scales incredibly badly for large, content heavy sites. I don't really want to see everything that Gizmodo publishes. I certainly don't want to see everything that Hu…

Google Reader had social too, and served your purpose very well. Plus you didn't have to filter out your uncle's political rants or your cousin posting her new baby's every action.

Re: O Reader My Reader – Remembering Google Reader

#66

Post by Touche »

commentzorro wrote: post #41
James_Owens_7 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I usually don't visit websites that don't have RSS and tell that to the website owners. You should do the same. How else will they know that people care about feeds?

Unfortunately, people who come to a website via RSS almost universally have ad blockers turned on and usually are not site sticky. Maybe not the best group to attract to your site?

I think you're assuming everyone who runs a website is running it as a business. I don't have ads on my website or even analytics.

Re: O Reader My Reader – Remembering Google Reader

#68

Post by rinze »

kristianc wrote: post #60

RSS was and still is great for following a few blogs that were relatively infrequently updated. If I follow Rands, DF or Marco, it works quite well. I receive timely, relevant content at a pace I can cope with and digest. The problem with RSS is that it scales incredibly badly for large, content heavy sites. I don't really want to see everything that Gizmodo publishes. I certainly don't want to see everything that Hu…

Yahoo had a very good approach to the problem of scalability with Yahoo Pipes, that allowed nearly anyone to filter and mix different RSS feeds (say, for instance, get from Wired only those articles wrtten by a given author and containing a certain keyword), but it got axed very recently.
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