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More than 500,000 Google Reader users have joined Feedly in the past 48 hours

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Re: More than 500,000 Google Reader users have joined Feedly in the past 48 hours

#91

Post by itsprofitbaron »

mladenkovacevic wrote: post #81
Confusion wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good lower limit. Not everyone has the time or inclination to take immediate action. I'm a heavy user of Google Reader and I haven't yet taken an action. I probably won't for at least a few weeks. What is baffling is that Google can't or won't monetize a product with that many users.

>What is baffling is that Google can't or won't monetize a product with that many users. Or even just open source it and get some positive PR to offset the negative they've been getting.

Google can't open source Google Reader even if it wanted to because, to make connections and recommendations it used Google's Crawler which is part of the rest of Google's infastructure - something which Google definitely won't open source. As well as using Google's Crawler, the Google Reader team created separate recommendations to improve Google Reader and those people don't come cheap either - and giving up that knowledge is valuable to Google's competitors.

Re: More than 500,000 Google Reader users have joined Feedly in the past 48 hours

#92

Post by p4bl0 »

jarito wrote: post #82
mladenkovacevic wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What is baffling is that Google can't or won't monetize a product with that many users. Or even just open source it and get some positive PR to offset the negative they've been getting.

This probably won't help. Google projects are typically built to run on their very specific infrastructure. It's unlikely that an open sourced version would be viable outside of Google. It's always possible though. Maybe they could release a version that would run on AppEngine and customers could just pay for their own or something.

If the product was open sourced I would gladly pay a subscription to use it on Google's infrastructure, so I think your AppEngine idea is a good one.

Re: More than 500,000 Google Reader users have joined Feedly in the past 48 hours

#93

Post by aaronbrethorst »

ezy wrote: post #80
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also it adds a button to the bottom right of every web page. I immediately uninstalled when I learned this. Newsblur has no such shenanigans and is developed by a HNer.

Too bad Newsblur is pretty badly designed. I mean, there's a lot of bling, but it's completely confusing and sometimes ugly. Magic icons everywhere, wierd fonts -- two different dropdowns on each entry for god's sake. It looks like it was designed by someone who used their IDE as a template for the UI. As an example of far too clever UI: Just try and change your password -- it's bizarre that it has no confirmation at…

I'm working on a really, really minimal news reader (sign up for updates here: http://signup.viafeeds.com).

I like the idea of Newsblur and Feedly a lot, but I don't feel like either of them capture the simplicity that Google Reader used to have, before the unfortunate redesign.

I want to get back to that, and have a system that will seamlessly work across the web and mobile.

It'll be a couple months before it's ready for primetime, but I should be looking for beta users well in advance of that, and you sound like exactly the type of person who'd want to use this.

Re: More than 500,000 Google Reader users have joined Feedly in the past 48 hours

#94

Post by saljam »

Confusion wrote: post #72
TillE wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Misleading" in the sense that only a fraction of those may become loyal Feedly users, sure. But it seems like a pretty good estimate of the number of active and aggrieved Google Reader users out there.

A good lower limit. Not everyone has the time or inclination to take immediate action. I'm a heavy user of Google Reader and I haven't yet taken an action. I probably won't for at least a few weeks. What is baffling is that Google can't or won't monetize a product with that many users.

You should also count for the people who switched to an RSS reader that isn't Feedly. I, for one, started using The Old Reader.

Re: More than 500,000 Google Reader users have joined Feedly in the past 48 hours

#95

Post by frio »

guptaneil wrote: post #37
icelancer wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was very excited to try Newsblur. It's not free, for those wondering, and free accounts are temporarily suspended. Oh well. Time to move on.

What's wrong with paying for a service that you find useful?

Nothing, but currently there's no way to try it before buying, which is a problem.

Re: More than 500,000 Google Reader users have joined Feedly in the past 48 hours

#96

Post by white_devil »

Just when we were discussing the complete lack of online privacy, here's a free app that just happily added new servers and 10x bandwith to accommodate 500 000 more users.

Sweet. Nevermind how they can afford all that capacity. Maybe they're a charity, funded by Bill & Melinda?

Re: More than 500,000 Google Reader users have joined Feedly in the past 48 hours

#97

Post by wyclif »

Confusion wrote: post #72
TillE wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Misleading" in the sense that only a fraction of those may become loyal Feedly users, sure. But it seems like a pretty good estimate of the number of active and aggrieved Google Reader users out there.

A good lower limit. Not everyone has the time or inclination to take immediate action. I'm a heavy user of Google Reader and I haven't yet taken an action. I probably won't for at least a few weeks. What is baffling is that Google can't or won't monetize a product with that many users.

>What is baffling is that Google can't or won't monetize a product with that many users.

Shockingly, nerds that consume media via RSS don't tend to click on ads.

Re: More than 500,000 Google Reader users have joined Feedly in the past 48 hours

#98

Post by k3n »

georgeoliver wrote: post #48
Kopion wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much relative effort and baggage compared to how Reader works. Reader's death continues to sadden me.

Actually I had to make the same changes to Reader.

For background tabs, Reader doesn't require an extension. All links should be normal tags, just middle-click (or right-click > new tab) and it opens behind Reader.

Re: More than 500,000 Google Reader users have joined Feedly in the past 48 hours

#99

Post by stickhandle »

I tried feedly, the old reader, and newsblur. The old reader is nice, but no mobile :-(. Newsblur is a mess ... i want a reader that gets out of my way. The only thing it really needs to do is let me organize things my way. Newsblur has that intelligence nonsense ... i already curated and organized. I don't need more. Sorry - i don't want to share with others either. It's for me. The interface has so much going on. I can't understand why HNers like it so much. Feedly is the (im)perfect choice so far. I wish it had more organizational settings, especially global. The "today" page is interesting, but i wish i could exclude some feeds that publish way more than others and just fill up the screen (sites like Ars Technica where i prefer to see their list of articles in rss rather than on their site). I expect LOTS more option to appear in the coming months, but right now, for a web based solution, Feedly is head and shoulders the best (imo). Their android app is really nice - takes a bit of getting the handle on, but after a few minutes, it seems like the absolute right way to do things (nevermind the great integration with Pocket). Cheers Feedly -- looking forward to an expected innovation run by you folks and hopefully a pay version.

Re: More than 500,000 Google Reader users have joined Feedly in the past 48 hours

#100

Post by shrikant »

guygurari wrote: post #69
rmrfrmrf wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until your favorite blogs realize that RSS is just a money sink and shut down their feeds, which is exactly what Google is subtly prophesying and no one seems to get.

RSS feeds can be monetized. For example, Daring Fireball [1] sells weekly 'sponsored posts' on the RSS feed, in addition to selling ads on the site. [1] http://daringfireball.net

And a lot of FeedBurner feeds show AdSense ads in the body of the feed. (I've seen them on Scott Adams' blog and FreethoughtBlogs.)
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