Google Reader lived on borrowed time: creator Chris Wetherell reflects
1–10 of 28 posts
Re: Google Reader lived on borrowed time: creator Chris Wetherell reflects
#2"Reader is (was?) for information junkies; not just tech nerds. This market totally exists and is weirdly under-served (and is possibly affluent)."
This is what I don't understand about the death of the RSS ecosystem. A whole class of professionals spend their days reading text -- in government, in finance, in specialist journalism. Many would pay for a decent reader; it's a tool of their trade, after all. You don't need mass adoption; a few thousand people at $20/month would keep you ticking over. So why haven't there been more companies in this space.
Re: Google Reader lived on borrowed time: creator Chris Wetherell reflects
#3"Reader is (was?) for information junkies; not just tech nerds. This market totally exists and is weirdly under-served (and is possibly affluent)." This is what I don't understand about the death of the RSS ecosystem. A whole class of professionals spend their days reading text -- in government, in finance, in specialist journalism. Many would pay for a decent reader; it's a tool of their trade, after all. You don't…
I have seen companies tried, and worked for a strategic consulting firm at one time who was heavily reliant on RSS feeds for sending information (we were basicly human parsers on very topic-specific items). And they used NewsGator. I get the impression NewGator is not doing that well, and the "I will pay good money" sector you suggest exists does not; very few people are willing to pay for good interface, despite a strong use case. I say the same about movies and television. There is a self-serving expectation of free, and few buck this trend unless they really need it and the pay-for services are not worth it, or do just enough. Maybe others can tell me their experiences.
I am definitely someone affected by this, and continue to look into better RSS management every year or so for this reason. It appears building my own solution is by far the best approach, and that is true for a whole bunch of software anyway. Oh well.
Re: Google Reader lived on borrowed time: creator Chris Wetherell reflects
#4"Reader is (was?) for information junkies; not just tech nerds. This market totally exists and is weirdly under-served (and is possibly affluent)." This is what I don't understand about the death of the RSS ecosystem. A whole class of professionals spend their days reading text -- in government, in finance, in specialist journalism. Many would pay for a decent reader; it's a tool of their trade, after all. You don't…
I have seen companies tried, and worked for a strategic consulting firm at one time who was heavily reliant on RSS feeds for sending information (we were basicly human parsers on very topic-specific items). And they used NewsGator. I get the impression NewGator is not doing that well, and the "I will pay good money" sector you suggest exists does not; very few people are willing to pay for good interface, despite a s…
I considered building my own too, but it seems like a lot of work for something I can sort of do without. Are there any open source web-based feed readers that are worth setting up and running?
Re: Google Reader lived on borrowed time: creator Chris Wetherell reflects
#5Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have seen companies tried, and worked for a strategic consulting firm at one time who was heavily reliant on RSS feeds for sending information (we were basicly human parsers on very topic-specific items). And they used NewsGator. I get the impression NewGator is not doing that well, and the "I will pay good money" sector you suggest exists does not; very few people are willing to pay for good interface, despite a s…
I considered building my own too, but it seems like a lot of work for something I can sort of do without. Are there any open source web-based feed readers that are worth setting up and running?
Tiny Tiny RSS maybe? http://tt-rss.org/
Re: Google Reader lived on borrowed time: creator Chris Wetherell reflects
#6"Reader is (was?) for information junkies; not just tech nerds. This market totally exists and is weirdly under-served (and is possibly affluent)." This is what I don't understand about the death of the RSS ecosystem. A whole class of professionals spend their days reading text -- in government, in finance, in specialist journalism. Many would pay for a decent reader; it's a tool of their trade, after all. You don't…
I have seen companies tried, and worked for a strategic consulting firm at one time who was heavily reliant on RSS feeds for sending information (we were basicly human parsers on very topic-specific items). And they used NewsGator. I get the impression NewGator is not doing that well, and the "I will pay good money" sector you suggest exists does not; very few people are willing to pay for good interface, despite a s…
It is time consuming. I have been working on my own open source reader and it takes a lot of effort to get right.
Even worse, I am having a hard time to get people to try it out so I can get feedback to improve it. I keep working on it just because I rely on it for my daily news/podcast.
Re: Google Reader lived on borrowed time: creator Chris Wetherell reflects
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have seen companies tried, and worked for a strategic consulting firm at one time who was heavily reliant on RSS feeds for sending information (we were basicly human parsers on very topic-specific items). And they used NewsGator. I get the impression NewGator is not doing that well, and the "I will pay good money" sector you suggest exists does not; very few people are willing to pay for good interface, despite a s…
It is time consuming. I have been working on my own open source reader and it takes a lot of effort to get right. Even worse, I am having a hard time to get people to try it out so I can get feedback to improve it. I keep working on it just because I rely on it for my daily news/podcast.
This is a great opportunity to get a few testers/users, if you'd like to continue developing it.
I do however understand that this can be quite overwhelming - so I'd recommend you'd only take in people manually (ie. no automatic signup - that'll probably be quite the load..)
Re: Google Reader lived on borrowed time: creator Chris Wetherell reflects
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have seen companies tried, and worked for a strategic consulting firm at one time who was heavily reliant on RSS feeds for sending information (we were basicly human parsers on very topic-specific items). And they used NewsGator. I get the impression NewGator is not doing that well, and the "I will pay good money" sector you suggest exists does not; very few people are willing to pay for good interface, despite a s…
It is time consuming. I have been working on my own open source reader and it takes a lot of effort to get right. Even worse, I am having a hard time to get people to try it out so I can get feedback to improve it. I keep working on it just because I rely on it for my daily news/podcast.
maybe because people used google reader ... i'm sure there wil be a lot more people interested in your project , a good rss reader is just an invaluable tool for my organisation and some exec may be willing to pay good money for a perfect google reader clone.
Re: Google Reader lived on borrowed time: creator Chris Wetherell reflects
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is time consuming. I have been working on my own open source reader and it takes a lot of effort to get right. Even worse, I am having a hard time to get people to try it out so I can get feedback to improve it. I keep working on it just because I rely on it for my daily news/podcast.
This is a great opportunity to get a few testers/users, if you'd like to continue developing it. I do however understand that this can be quite overwhelming - so I'd recommend you'd only take in people manually (ie. no automatic signup - that'll probably be quite the load..)
It's Android client based http://goo.gl/kShgp so it has no server limitation and it is actively being developed https://github.com/dodyg/AndroidRivers
I am helping out Cartulary as well https://github.com/daveajones/cartulary that will provide S3 based RSS aggregation functionality.
Re: Google Reader lived on borrowed time: creator Chris Wetherell reflects
#10I would have thought that Google would keep Reader running. Not because there would be a strong business case, but because pissing of both bloggers for fucking with their channels (who in aggregate is a huge influencer) and information omnivores (many of who love to share opinions of companies and products with their social circle) is a huge PR hit to take for saving peanuts. They couldn't have done worse by buying full-page attack ads against themselves in NYT.
I went to Newsblur last year, because I like to support the little sites when they're filling my need, but Reader was the Google product I used most by a mile, I'll miss it. I accept that Google doesn't make things for me anymore, I'll look elsewhere for exciting products.