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Goodbye, Feedly

erikgahner.dk

131–140 of 201 posts

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#131
post #114
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author acknowledged that though. He seemed to even had considered buying it, but thought it was not worth it. He eventually settled on something simple and free. It doesn't surprise me that running a simple RSS feed tool is not profitable.

There is very little simple about running an RSS aggregator, especially at scale.

I run one at scale, it doesn’t need to be done in a complicated way

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#132
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…

RSS is basically impossible to monetize. It's a protocol to access content. Monetizing RSS is like trying to monetize HTTP. The problem is that companies try to monetize RSS, and the only way of doing so is to provide features that RSS can't offer. AI-curated feeds, integrations with X or Y, nudges to let go of RSS entirely for some applications and instead use whatever integration they've come up with... Some people…

I'm using the Feedly app not paid since Google shut down theirs.

I have no clue what you mean.

Where do they show this daily?

And don't get me wrong, you traided self management against a nag pop up? It's your choice but Feedly still does it with a reasonable offering.

And I actually thinking about going pro to remove all the rumor news shit I don't care and the cve feature sounds nice as well.

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#133
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? In case of Feedly, yes. I feel like a hamster being tried to be converted. Feedly's free tier doesn't feel like free. It feels like a getaway drug which tries to make you pay for other features. I have used for a week, then SDF announced availability of their TTRSS instance. As a paying member, I moved there. I am much more happier now. TTRSS is free and open source. I'm just supporting SDF s…

Your sentiment is frustrating to read as a software engineer.either do it yourself or accept that those people also want to have a great job, good salary etc.

And as stated on another comment: no it's not that bad. I use it free since Google shut down theirs

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#134
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…

> it well but includes a few prompts here and there for marketing purposes...is that really so bad?

If they are done well, no. Problem is they often aren't. An example of this is when I downloaded some app like headspace and they had this sort of relax and be ready to fall a sleep feature. It was relaxing and well done and turned the screen down nicely. Then, as soon as it was over, the screen was set to bright and it asked if wanted to rate it on the store.

Other apps will show marketing over what you are trying to do, or in a distracting manor.

So after a while people will start to associate it with scummy and bad behavior.

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are entitled like you and I, and everyone, is entitled to good products and not being angry when using them. Sure, if you're paying for it. If not, prepare for all the ways a company is going to try to make the service profitable, starting with ads and come-ons to paid tiers. Don't want that? Pay, or self-host something. It's absolutely entitled to make an indignant post about why you're changing away from a ser…

I don’t think it’s entitled at all to expect things to not suck regardless of whether they’re free or require payment. Truly good products make you want to pay to receive a carrot, bad ones to avoid a stick. The only carrots Feedly has to offer are all moldy and gross, so they’ve resorted to more and more sticks. The author also did exactly what you want by switching to NetNewsWire, so I don’t know what you’re compla…

Truly good products make you want to pay to receive a carrot, bad ones to avoid a stick.

Except not getting the carrot free is the stick to plenty of people.

so I don’t know what you’re complaining about

Given I explicitly said what I was complaining about, you should know.

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#136
OP is using a free service. Free service introduces changes which irritate OP. OP stops using service and looks for alternatives.

All good.

What I (and seemingly many other commenters) take issue with is the tone of the piece. That the OP has been disappointed, that they know better than Feedly management about what features to include and how to market them, that they are owed some sort of a user experience.

I suppose the OP is offering this post as guidance and explanation for Feedly management but I can’t imagine that this moves the needle.

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In case of Feedly, yes. I feel like a hamster being tried to be converted. You are a hamster trying to be converted. That’s the point of the free tier. You could just pay for it and the nagging would stop. You are now paying for TTRSS and have the experience of a paying customer.

Hard to say. Part of the appeal of advertising in Cosmpolitan or the New York Times is that the readers have qualified themselves by paying for a subscription. Netflix is playing a dangerous game by letting people pay to turn on ads because the kind of person who values their attention so little to save a few dollars isn’t going to buy anything. The really desirable people to advertise to are the ones who have more m…

My guess is that a person who subscribes to the entry level of a product is more likely to be upsold to something else than a free user is going to even think about paying.

I think this is the crucial thing. If you offer a service with what you might call a "livable" or "comfortable" free tier, it will end up used as heavily as you allow by people who will cost you resources indefinitely, but who are far more likely to switch to another free service than to ever pay you a cent. For instance, as terrible as this blogger claims to have found Feedly, he used it for nearly a decade!

Skip the temptation to try to eke out a little money from the free tier (because you probably won't) and think of it strictly as a trial option. Either give a time-limited free trial of the service or a heavily-limited version of the service that shows how it works, but that absolutely nobody would want to use at that level forever.

(And in that latter case, then you'll still find one or two users who are willing to subsist on your free tier, whether that's a 3-feed RSS reader or whatever. Shrug and reflect that those weirdos aren't costing you much.)

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#138
I don't have any of these issues at all? I've a folder called 'main blogs' which is just every feed I follow. Any link I have to Feedly is a link to my 'main blogs' folder which provides a pretty clean interface. I have 0 adds on my 'main blogs' page currently. Perhaps a similar setup would work for others.

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#139
post #70

I’ve been very happy with https://feedbin.com It’s a paid RSS syncing service and web app too, costs $5 per month, I use it with Reeder (and NetNewsWire etc). It doesn’t have any social cruft or AI assistants or ML companions. I was also a Feedly user when I decided to try Feedbin, and I immediately noticed how much faster fetching the feeds was on Feedbin. I also like to have my email newsletters in same place (forw…

I've been using feedbin since Reader closed, so I guess 9 years. Still grandfathered in a $20/yr plan, even. The best thing about it for me is that I mostly don't think about it other than a visit to see my feeds. It does what I want and isn't awful to look at. Most of the RSS apps I've ever used have integration too. It's a lovely service.

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#140
post #124

RSS is something I really want to use, but so far I've not been able to find a single piece of software that handles RSS that doesn't suck. I want to add a bunch of RSS feeds, and then have the software notify me - or at least highlight - when related "tags" or words are used, as well as be able to see "everything". But I guess RSS is about to die out anyways, as more and more news sites only allow you to read the fi…

I started using liferea a few months ago, primarily to track YT channels without YT (so to speak). It can do some version of everything you've mentioned, though is weak on the automatic tag notification thing (though for the feeds I follow, that makes sense, since they are mostly video).

Cheers, I'll give it a go.
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