Live data from Hacker News

Goodbye, Feedly

erikgahner.dk

181–190 of 201 posts

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#181
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…

That's why the revival of NetNewsWire is a great thing. They don't offer enough settings, but outside of that they're at parity with all the paying services and they're free and open-source.

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Your sentiment is also frustrating to read as a software engineer. As I stated before, I pay for a lot of services, and pay for their highest tier plans because I feel that they deserve my money. However, Feedly feels like they want my money first instead of giving me more or better service, and I don’t feel like they deserve my money, so I don’t pay them.

No post body was provided.

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#183
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. It's so comical. You were never going to support them making their software, never going to upgrade, never going to provide any value to them in anyway even though they provided value to you for 10 years. Seems like this is a good thing for feedly.

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.

That's 100% reasonable. What's not reasonable is spending time to write a blog post in a tone that makes it seem like the product "is bad". The may not like it but the author wasn't a customer. It's the classic "I would buy it/pay for it if it only had XYZ or did/didn't do ABC." When in reality they were never going to pay for it, they just wanted something simple and free, which is 100% fine.

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. It's so comical. You were never going to support them making their software, never going to upgrade, never going to provide any value to them in anyway even though they provided value to you for 10 years. Seems like this is a good thing for feedly.

for apparently nonsense features. this isn’t a patronage model, it’s a product (and the free tier is not what’s being sold)

That was my point. They are not a charity, they are a business. It's not their job to build features for people who have been using the service for 10 year with no intention to upgrade. This person wants a simple free rss reader, all good.

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#185

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 w…

I've recommended Inoreader multiple times on this site before, but unfortunately the service has gotten worse over the years by a couple of metrics.

Most of the worthwhile features are now gated behind the most expensive plan, rather than being properly staggered. I subscribe to so few feeds I could literally use the free (ad-supported) plan, and I use none of the advanced features at all except filters. If you want to filter a single feed, you have to buy the most expensive plan they sell. That's crazy!

Regardless, I have happily supported them for years. I'm not the sort of user that others are complaining about in this thread that wants everything for free. That's about to change too though. Since the site began, the plan I've been on has cost $30 a year, which is acceptable for the value I get out of it. I was able to extend the plan for multiple years at $18/yr thanks to Black Friday and Christmas sales. Now, however, they're changing things around, and want me to resubscribe to keep the features I use at $90/yr (or $120 if you pay monthly). I'm not a software engineer making six figures. I can't afford to throw $100 at every service I use like this. A $30 -> $90 price increase is just enormous.

Again, I want to pay for the features I use, but because they've failed to provide any kind of pricing ramp, they'll soon get nothing from me.

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for apparently nonsense features. this isn’t a patronage model, it’s a product (and the free tier is not what’s being sold)

That was my point. They are not a charity, they are a business. It's not their job to build features for people who have been using the service for 10 year with no intention to upgrade. This person wants a simple free rss reader, all good.

(misread your tone completely)

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#187
The main two complain:

>I have done everything I could to turn off features that I do not need, but this is still relatively cluttered. I do not need to access Leo, Feedly’s AI engine. I do not need to UPGRADE to ‘Pro’. I do not need two separate vertical menus.

This makes it sounds like he "did" turn off many features to make it what it shows in the screenshot. But in fact he didn't. Those were default. And when you look at "Leo", and "Upgrade Pro", one being a simple link the other being a top banner that disappear once you scroll down a little. Arguably speaking the only "constant" clutter that is there is the thin vertical menus. That is it!

>Recently, Feedly also started showing me pop-ups in case I want to track ’emerging exploits across the Web with Feedly’s AI Engine’ and to ‘research critical vulnerabilities with the new CVE Intelligence Card’, whatever that is.

You know, those pop up aren't even Ads. They are new feature notifications. Which means it rarely happens. But the author made it as if it was a daily annoyance.

The new generation of programmers who believes everything should be free and open source, preferably AGPL 3.0 to stop companies using GPL 2.0 loopholes, or worse licenses like MIT or BSD which are now considered as "harmful" because they help "evil for profit making companies". All while asking for $200K as a new developers joining right out of college.

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What are the differences that made you switch?

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your user account may be old enough to be grandfathered into a lower obnoxiousness setting.

When migrating from Android to iOS 1.5 years ago, I decided to set up a fresh Feedly account linked to the Apple identity instead of the Google identity. My original Feedly account is from circa 2013. As it turned out, I could not set up my feeds in the same way as on the old account because the free tier now caps out at 3 categories (or sections or whatever, the things where you group feeds into). On my old setup, I have 5 or 6 categories, also on the free tier. So I think there's some amount of grandfathering going on.

Re: Goodbye, Feedly

#190

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…

It is ad supported, not free. So there’s a commercial quality expectation. Am I “entitled” if I don’t like a tv show on broadcast tv even though it has ads? Also, even truly free/oss software has an expectation of quality. And saying “I don’t like it and won’t use it” isn’t being entitled. It’s just a normal human response. If I’m in a museum and look at a painting and remark to my friends “I don’t like that painting…

Am I “entitled” if I don’t like a tv show on broadcast tv even though it has ads?

Did you watch it for nearly ten years, then make an indignant post ranting about all its flaws because you were tired of ads for the blu-trays or whatever?

I think it’s pretty authoritarian to call out people expressing reasonable opinions as if they are “entitled.”

You've picked a bad time in history to be so badly confused on what "authoritarian" means.

Post reply on HN