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Goodbye, Feedly

erikgahner.dk

31–40 of 201 posts

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#31
post #12

Going through the article I realized this attitude is what eventually kills some really good software. If a software does what you expect it to do and does it well but includes a few prompts here and there for marketing purposes...is that really so bad? Live and let live, I say. Not everyone is running a charity and Feedly is nowhere even near the top of the list of software ripping off their users or selling their d…

> that the reasons the author is calling Feedly out for are unjustified and don't really make sense.

Well, at least it is justified and make sense for the author.

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#32
post #12

Going through the article I realized this attitude is what eventually kills some really good software. If a software does what you expect it to do and does it well but includes a few prompts here and there for marketing purposes...is that really so bad? Live and let live, I say. Not everyone is running a charity and Feedly is nowhere even near the top of the list of software ripping off their users or selling their d…

> is that really so bad?

I think in many situations, yes. I grew up with shareware and so I know that prompts are necessary to drive income.

What the prompts in this article are so bad at is that they are perpetual. Is it really necessary to nag a user over and over for something they don’t want and declined? That is probably not going to work in the long run as people associate a bad experience with the product.

Figure out a better way to get income that doesn’t involve perpetually wasting a user’s time and frustrating them.

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#33
post #22
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that is a bit unfair. Many of us have used something that was originally a certain way and worked and we have let it get embedded and useful at which point it becomes more and more complicated, maybe the upgrade prompts become much more prominent and we feel let down by something that doesn't actually solve the problem any more. I don't know Feedly's history and whether it was originally Open Source or not bu…

If you have a problem solved by software, pay for it. They’re not a charity. If you’re just using without giving back you have zero standing to feel let down. Feedly is a SaaS, not a foss project. They have bills to pay.

Foss project also have bills to pay.

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#34
post #13

This writer is really entitled. It is a free tier for a service that costs money to host and maintain. Of course there are upgrade prompts. I use Feedly (free) as a hosting service, and Reeder or one of the other many great RSS client apps as the frontend to it, so I don’t have to see the feedly interface.But the Feedly API I use constantly and it is extremely solid. That’s part of the greatness of RSS services. If t…

> This writer is really entitled

Yes, but no. They are entitled like you and I, and everyone, is entitled to good products and not being angry when using them. They aren’t especially entitled to the point to use the word as an insult.

Feedly sells ads. So it’s free, but they include ads. They aren’t a charity benevolently putting out the app and everyone should suck it up and be thankful.

Obviously, people can choose not to use it. And they do. Feedly seems to be in a bit of a doom spiral with being worse and worse and driving away more and more users.

It seems to me that they have some expensive to develop but not very useful (eg, AI to detect stuff in feeds) that users don’t find worth $6 but the costs need covering. So their approach is to keep pushing it on users more and more.

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#35
Try Inoreader. Besides a bevy of rich feature set, Inoreader has sales ONLY on Black Friday, and they usually extend the service by an additional 6 months if you pay yearly. It lacks Feedly's stupid UI. It's functional, fast, and I can zip through hundreds of feeds in no time. My favourite is the IFTTT and Readwise integration baked in. Alternatively, you can have the complete experience in Vivaldi itself. It comes with the RSS reader and a mail client. Absolute DOPE! Inoreader allows you to keep track of specific keywords and automatically follow the RSS feeds. I am waiting for a better UI around Vivaldi's RSS reader, and will reevaluate my RSS reader needs close to the end of the subscription period.

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#37
post #27

If you liked it before all the monetization strategies, maybe should have paid for it to keep it sustainable that way?

I don’t think so. It would just be nagging for other things. I think this is a design philosophy by Feedly and paying just pushes the problem down the road.

I pay for creative cloud and there’s so many ads and pitches for new products. I long for the days where I pirated ps6 and never had any ads (or paid for it too).

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#38

https://theoldreader.com/ is still the best thing after Google Reader.

I tried it when they started, it was a sluggish mess that also did not use the browser cache correctly. Maybe I noticed because I had thousands of RSS feeds, I dunno. Granted, that was a decade ago so I hope they improved it since. I stick to https://newsblur.com/ . It has it's quirks but is way, way faster (two days ago a redesign came out that makes it so fast I feel like I'm using the old Google Reader again)

I read about their redesign today. I was with them for about 5+ years but then eventually shifted to Inoreader.

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#39
You can use Feedly simply as a cloud service to store your RSS subscriptions. There's a number of good clients that use it and display a simple feed that you want. For Android, there is FeedMe.

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#40
post #13

This writer is really entitled. It is a free tier for a service that costs money to host and maintain. Of course there are upgrade prompts. I use Feedly (free) as a hosting service, and Reeder or one of the other many great RSS client apps as the frontend to it, so I don’t have to see the feedly interface.But the Feedly API I use constantly and it is extremely solid. That’s part of the greatness of RSS services. If t…

Entitled? Kind of? The thing is, RSS reader clients are pretty much a solved problem, and they aren't particularly resource intensive. You can run your own FreshRSS instance for example for free (https://www.felesatra.moe/blog/2022/06/25/easy-freshrss, you do need a domain name though if you want HTTPS, or just run it on your local machine).
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