RIP Google Reader • Hacker News Board

Re: RIP Google Reader

#141

Post by slgeorge » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

conesus wrote: post #126

baumy wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point a year or two ago I googled around for "best rss reader app" or "best rss news app" looking for android specifically, and I don't remember seeing newsblur talked about anywhere. All of the ones I did try (aggregator, feedly, inoreader, etc) were unsatisfactory in various ways. I just downloaded and tried newsblur and it's pretty much perfect for my taste and needs. Going to try it for a few days then wi…

Marketing is hard for me because I've hired a few folks to do targeted ads and it ended up being a big cost sink. Beyond that, I try to blog regularly and use big screenshots for new features, which helps a bit with SEO and discoverability. But getting NB onto lists? I'm not sure what that requires.

I'm a subscriber so I have self-interest in you being successful and I've paid money to help support that. If there's one thing I would encourage/plead you to do, it's to hire one person who will do "advocacy marketing". You said "Marketing is hard" and there's no doubt. But you'll know the right person, because they'll be __more__ excited about talking about your product and how it can be used, and who can use it ... than even you are. Most importantly, they'll just do that one thing. RSS/Newsletters is an area of content that geeks love - so finding someone who wants to __regularly__ talk about that in content, video, would be massive. I'll stop there ;-)

Re: RIP Google Reader

#142

Post by TimTheTinker » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 4:52 PM UTC

On this day, March 25 2021, Google Reader has been dead for longer than it was alive.

source: https://twitter.com/ZackMaril/status/1365834285463257091

Re: RIP Google Reader

#143

Post by ecliptik » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 4:53 PM UTC

conesus wrote: post #109

ecliptik wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for Newsblur, it's one of my essential apps and I use it for almost everything; RSS feeds, reddit, youtube, twitter, newsletters, even gemini:// via proxy. It's a solid product, and the amount of work you've put into it shows and I plan to remain a customer for years to come.

Then you'll be excited to see the upcoming redesign that I have yet to publicly launch (but want a few users on to test the waters early): https://beta.newsblur.com

Looks awesome, replaced my pinned tab with the beta version and will put it through it's paces. Thank you!

Re: RIP Google Reader

#144

Post by politelemon » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 4:53 PM UTC

harha wrote: post #24

Let us also remember Inbox, haven’t been able to manage day through my calendar, tasks and email in one place as seamlessly since that one was sunset.

I am still holding out naive, idiotic hope that someone will build an Inbox replacement. And not the box-ticking feature-parity that they still haven't delivered on, but the actual intelligent workflows, while maintaining a clean uncluttered experience, that Inbox was so good at. I do understand though, that a lot of people who didn't "get" Inbox will not understand this sentiment either. But there are dozens of us!

The closest I'm finding now, strangely, is Outlook, and MS Todo. Through a combination of flagged emails and the archive function. Though it's still in multiple places and not one. SparkMail app helps as well with slightly advanced snoozing, but nowhere near the Inbox experience. I'm bitter now, thanks

Re: RIP Google Reader

#145

Post by einpoklum » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC

baumy wrote: post #118

conesus wrote: post #35

It was in the summer of 2008, three years after Google launched Reader and had at least 5 million users, when I decided to write my own RSS reader. There were just so many features I wanted that I knew Google would never build and for some strange reason I thought I could make money with my own opinionated take on a news reader. Then at 4pm on March 13th, 2013, I got an email from Nilay at The Verge asking if I'd hea…

At some point a year or two ago I googled around for "best rss reader app" or "best rss news app" looking for android specifically, and I don't remember seeing newsblur talked about anywhere. All of the ones I did try (aggregator, feedly, inoreader, etc) were unsatisfactory in various ways. I just downloaded and tried newsblur and it's pretty much perfect for my taste and needs. Going to try it for a few days then wi…

I'm using Flym, although TBH I'm not a very demanding user not have I carried out a thorough survey.

Re: RIP Google Reader

#146

Post by tomjen3 » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 4:55 PM UTC

alex_duf wrote: post #120

waterhouse wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, interesting. Is it based on Youtube's raw RSS features? Because you can use RSS for an entire channel, or for a playlist, but the latter doesn't work if there are more than 15 (IIRC) videos in the playlist. Does Newsblur do something specific to Youtube to work around that? Also, does any RSS reader have some kind of regex filtering option? "I want all the items from this RSS feed that match the following regex"…

I think youtube had killed every RSS endpoint, I remember channels disappearing from my RSS app. So either youtube has done the right thing or that specific reader is scrapping the HTML of the channel pages.

I am subscribing to youtube channels through thunderbird. It works well for right now and it makes it easy to either open the url or copy it to youtube-dl or mpv for out of browser watching, but getting the rss url for a named channel is so janky now, and it feels like it works only because nobody has turned it of, like it is one design tweak from being disabled entirely.

Ah well, I will continue subscribing in Thunderbird until whomever keeps RSS alive at youtube (thank you, if you are reading this) moves on to better things.

Then I will watch it sunset just as I did with google music, G+, Google reader and all the rest Google has killed over the years.

Re: RIP Google Reader

#147

Post by bayindirh » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #11

Whatever was said at the time, I’m convinced Google Reader was collateral damage from the Bay of Pigs Google Plus effort. It had social features (which I honestly never used) and anything social had to be G+. Still, I honestly don’t understand why this is the hill people want to die on, what they feel most betrayed about. Like I haven’t seen some people this upset since Firefly was canceled.

Because that thing was infinitely useful. I was able to read 100+ articles without burning out, got the only things that I wanted to see, filter what I didn't want and was able to track the most interesting sites.

I've skimmed everything in 15 minutes, mark/star/whatever anything with unprecedented speed.

It was the ultimate user-curated feed, without all the cruft of today's feed. It was mine, tailored for me, by me.

...and whole thing was keyboard-drivable.

Re: RIP Google Reader

#148

Post by aasasd » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

baumy wrote: post #118

conesus wrote: post #35

It was in the summer of 2008, three years after Google launched Reader and had at least 5 million users, when I decided to write my own RSS reader. There were just so many features I wanted that I knew Google would never build and for some strange reason I thought I could make money with my own opinionated take on a news reader. Then at 4pm on March 13th, 2013, I got an email from Nilay at The Verge asking if I'd hea…

At some point a year or two ago I googled around for "best rss reader app" or "best rss news app" looking for android specifically, and I don't remember seeing newsblur talked about anywhere. All of the ones I did try (aggregator, feedly, inoreader, etc) were unsatisfactory in various ways. I just downloaded and tried newsblur and it's pretty much perfect for my taste and needs. Going to try it for a few days then wi…

Well you'd come upon it sooner if you used alternativeto.net, which is pretty good among software listings.

Re: RIP Google Reader

#149

Post by crazygringo » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 4:59 PM UTC

dpeck wrote: post #114

Those of you who don’t understand why people were attached to Reader: Please keep in mind that it’s generally not the death of the tool that we lament after all these years. It is the destruction of our communities there that we’re still sad about. Imagine your favorite coffee shop, bar, church or social club ceased to be. You’d still see some of the previous members at other places, but the community as it existed i…

Wait, what was the community?

I thought it was just an RSS reader. This is the first I've ever heard of a Reader "community".

I'm looking it up and it doesn't appear there were forums or anything. What was the community aspect?

Re: RIP Google Reader

#150

Post by rodolphoarruda » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 4:59 PM UTC

Google Reader was my favorite web app by a wide margin and I can remember how well informed I was back then. Social networks were not part of my life yet, so free time was spent on Reader. RIP.

Now I work the best I can using IFTTT to pull news from the feeds that are still functional and then pushing results into an Evernote notebook I nostalgically named Reader.