241–250 of 424 posts
So basically, one can begin slapping together a competitor as soon as Google rolls out a service—because the service is likely to go the way of the Reader in a few years.
Google Keep is next. It is neat and simple, though I haven't been using it lately.
A few folks here are asking why old timers still mourn Google Reader when there are so many good alternatives available now. I agree, there are. It even opened the door for many more tools in the space. I love using Feedly, Reeder, and NetNewsWire. But to me the sadness comes from seeing the open web continue to fray. At the time Google felt like an important part of the open web, and RSS was part of the glue that he…
That's really the thing. People lash out at Google because it's a concrete target. And probably one of the worse examples of Google killing something that seemed clearly in the purview of an early mission to organize information. I'm often a bit surprised that Blogger has survived.
But it's also emblematic of the fact that a fairly niche open web activity was becoming even more niche.
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Because Google Reader was the social network for people who don't like talking about themselves but about things on the web that they find interesting, and nothing since has ever come close to it.
Isn't Pinterest basically what you describe?
The killed RSS, then the reader. It's all on Google for demise of RSS.
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Certainly that was Google's intention. Thank goodness they failed.
But they didn't even try very hard. G+ didn't event have a way to create events. Google Calendar was on every Android device, it would have been so seamless if you could have create a birthday party or attend a rave in the park and it would be right in your calendar. But no, you could only post stories and pictures. That made for a rather bare-bones social network.
I have a friend who had an amazing wedding photo album created this way; to this day they swear that if it had been marketed better g+ events would have put wedding photographers out of business...
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Because Google Reader was the social network for people who don't like talking about themselves but about things on the web that they find interesting, and nothing since has ever come close to it.
HN is pretty close to the news feed I had in Reader.
Google Reader had reshares, not upvotes. The only indication you had for "is this an article worth reading?" beyond the actual headline was the number of friends who reshared the same article. However, unlike any other social network, Google Reader wouldn't show me who reshared an article first, nor would you get any imaginary points for sharing something interesting. As such, there was no gamified hunt for "karma" or "upvotes" or whatever. There was no incentive for resharing other than "I read/watched this and think it's interesting", and the result was a much more sincere curation of topics that interested your friends.
Similarly, there were no downvotes or upvotes on the discussions.
NewsBlur copied that set-up, but out of roughly 40 close friends from college who intensely used Google Reader, only five made the switch to NewsBlur. The rest ended up scattered among chat apps and other social networks.
So basically, one can begin slapping together a competitor as soon as Google rolls out a service—because the service is likely to go the way of the Reader in a few years.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because Google Reader was the social network for people who don't like talking about themselves but about things on the web that they find interesting, and nothing since has ever come close to it.
In retrospect, Google Reader could have evolved into a service like tiktok that keeps pushing interesting contents to its subscribers. Of course, it's easier to say that in hindsight.