4 ms·

I've tried Feedly but my goodness, the corporate language is such a turn off. I just want a feed reader, I don't want to "Fuel your team's success," "Enrich art

I've tried Feedly but my goodness, the corporate language is such a turn off. I just want a feed reader, I don't want to "Fuel your team's success," "Enrich articles with unique insights," "Automate your content workflows," "Reinforce your digital brand". These features may be cool and useful, but the way they're sold makes me gag. I used my ad blocker to remove the "Well done!" that appears when everything is marked as read, it's so patronising. Now I use rrss (https://github.com/pmarinov/rrss https://github.com/pmarinov/rrss) because it just reads feeds and doesn't constantly promote itself with management garbage.

SimeVidas 9y ago
I’m viewing RSS on feedly.com for years. I just checked the features in Feedly Pro. It says that the free tier is limited to 100 sources, while Pro gets you unlimited sources. What does this mean? I’ve already added over 500 sources and it seems to work fine.
- mandelbulb 9y ago
  You had the account before they put the limit in place. As for the parent comment, read my two posts here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16721859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16721859
criddell 9y ago
I think it was Feedly that has sent me a survey asking what I want them to work on. My reply was that it does its job just fine. Reduce the team to a skeleton crew and slip into maintenance mode. It seems dangerous to keep expanding the feature set because you are just expanding your future maintenance budget. I don't think I've ever shared a single thing from my news reader. I don't want people sending me stuff so it only seems right that I don't spam them.
- leonroy 9y ago
  This. Sadly though VC money doesn’t really align with a reasonable rate of return. Seems Feedly did take on a $1M round a little while back - that said they’ve been around since 2006... I use it everyday, one of my favourite apps — hope they’ll keep the product around in its present form for a long while yet.
roywiggins 9y ago
I had the same problem with Feedly. Just the other day I set up a server on NearlyFreeSpeech and threw Miniflux (a PHP RSS reader) on there. It's not polished but it is nice to be in control.
splitbrain 9y ago
To me inoreader.com is the perfect Google reader like feed reader. I don't get all the fuzz about feedly, there are better alternatives. just my $0.02
- jpkeisala 9y ago
  I switched from Feedly for inoreader. They have good iOS app as well.
- trm42 9y ago
  Tried first The Old Reader but at some point of time switched to Inoreader for a reason I can't remember anymore but Inoreader has been really awesome all the way <3
  - tatami 9y ago
    I went the same route, but The Old Reader at one day announced shutting down for all users that came after Google Reader's end. They reverted this a few days later but by then I was on an alternative already (could have been tt-rss then)
- reificator 9y ago
  When Google Reader died Feedly was the easiest alternative to switch to. For a few years I continued to use third party clients for reading, as most of them transparently supported Feedly the same way as Google Reader. Lately I've just started using Feedly directly, and I don't have too much of an issue with it. I should note, I rarely use the web interface. Since around 2009 I've used mobile apps for my news feeds.
- bscphil 9y ago
  Agreed. I switched to Inoreader after several weeks of looking for an alternative to Google Reader and I haven't looked back since. I've had a great experience; their Android app is very good and they seem to have a reasonable business model. The UIs on Feedly and Newsblur didn't suit me at all. As I recall Feedly made it very difficult to even read the articles. Inoreader has the nice two-column view Google Reader and mail apps like Fastmail use.
znpy 9y ago
Indeed. I just tried Feedly on Android and it just gets in the way. It's awful. Suggestions are disgustingly location aware (why am I getting only feeds from my mother language?). I need folders and a panel to read my rss feeds, everything else is fancy SPAM.
tgraham 9y ago
Agree but use feedly as a backend and reeder as the front.
jseliger 9y ago
I never actually left NetNewsWire. It's kinda crappy in a lot of ways, but it's also "good enough," at least for my purposes.
wvl 9y ago
I had the same issue with Feedly's "features". I've maintained a stylish extension for Feedly that I keep adding to. Every time they add something that I don't want to see, I hide it via css. Thanks for the prompt, I just hid the patronising "Well done" that's been annoying me. If anyone else wants to try to strip feedly back, they can try my css here: https://gist.github.com/wvl/4cd7d7d314fe9a544f2851296db61bb9 https://gist.github.com/wvl/4cd7d7d314fe9a544f2851296db61bb9
unicornporn 9y ago
I selfhost FreshRSS, it's awesome and uses an SQLite DB.
aidaman 9y ago
Oh my goodness is that an inane complaint.
- goostavos 9y ago
  Eh, I dunno. The light gamification of every. single. thing. I interact with definitely gets old. Some times I just want a tool to be a tool, not an interactive "experience" that tells me "good job!" or gives me a Gold Star after I perform random task X. If given the choice between a service that just does its job, and one that 'engages me as a user', I'd tend to choose the former most of the time -- doubly so for something like a reader.
corobo 9y ago
All I wanted from Feedly was to scroll properly. The way it scrolls killed RSS feeds for me. Maybe that's too harsh, in reality it was a shared effort between Google Reader being killed off and Feedly's scroll thing but I've not used RSS feeds for anything but podcasts since. I would love to go back to RSS feeds but my word would it take an absolute diamond of a service to pull me back

SimeVidas 9y ago

I’m viewing RSS on feedly.com for years. I just checked the features in Feedly Pro. It says that the free tier is limited to 100 sources, while Pro gets you unlimited sources. What does this mean? I’ve already added over 500 sources and it seems to work fine.

mandelbulb 9y ago
You had the account before they put the limit in place. As for the parent comment, read my two posts here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16721859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16721859

criddell 9y ago

I think it was Feedly that has sent me a survey asking what I want them to work on. My reply was that it does its job just fine. Reduce the team to a skeleton crew and slip into maintenance mode. It seems dangerous to keep expanding the feature set because you are just expanding your future maintenance budget. I don't think I've ever shared a single thing from my news reader. I don't want people sending me stuff so it only seems right that I don't spam them.

leonroy 9y ago
This. Sadly though VC money doesn’t really align with a reasonable rate of return. Seems Feedly did take on a $1M round a little while back - that said they’ve been around since 2006... I use it everyday, one of my favourite apps — hope they’ll keep the product around in its present form for a long while yet.

roywiggins 9y ago

I had the same problem with Feedly. Just the other day I set up a server on NearlyFreeSpeech and threw Miniflux (a PHP RSS reader) on there. It's not polished but it is nice to be in control.

splitbrain 9y ago

To me inoreader.com is the perfect Google reader like feed reader. I don't get all the fuzz about feedly, there are better alternatives. just my $0.02

jpkeisala 9y ago
I switched from Feedly for inoreader. They have good iOS app as well.
trm42 9y ago
Tried first The Old Reader but at some point of time switched to Inoreader for a reason I can't remember anymore but Inoreader has been really awesome all the way <3
- tatami 9y ago
  I went the same route, but The Old Reader at one day announced shutting down for all users that came after Google Reader's end. They reverted this a few days later but by then I was on an alternative already (could have been tt-rss then)
reificator 9y ago
When Google Reader died Feedly was the easiest alternative to switch to. For a few years I continued to use third party clients for reading, as most of them transparently supported Feedly the same way as Google Reader. Lately I've just started using Feedly directly, and I don't have too much of an issue with it. I should note, I rarely use the web interface. Since around 2009 I've used mobile apps for my news feeds.
bscphil 9y ago
Agreed. I switched to Inoreader after several weeks of looking for an alternative to Google Reader and I haven't looked back since. I've had a great experience; their Android app is very good and they seem to have a reasonable business model. The UIs on Feedly and Newsblur didn't suit me at all. As I recall Feedly made it very difficult to even read the articles. Inoreader has the nice two-column view Google Reader and mail apps like Fastmail use.

znpy 9y ago

Indeed. I just tried Feedly on Android and it just gets in the way. It's awful. Suggestions are disgustingly location aware (why am I getting only feeds from my mother language?). I need folders and a panel to read my rss feeds, everything else is fancy SPAM.

tgraham 9y ago

Agree but use feedly as a backend and reeder as the front.

jseliger 9y ago

I never actually left NetNewsWire. It's kinda crappy in a lot of ways, but it's also "good enough," at least for my purposes.

wvl 9y ago

I had the same issue with Feedly's "features". I've maintained a stylish extension for Feedly that I keep adding to. Every time they add something that I don't want to see, I hide it via css. Thanks for the prompt, I just hid the patronising "Well done" that's been annoying me. If anyone else wants to try to strip feedly back, they can try my css here: https://gist.github.com/wvl/4cd7d7d314fe9a544f2851296db61bb9 https://gist.github.com/wvl/4cd7d7d314fe9a544f2851296db61bb9

unicornporn 9y ago

I selfhost FreshRSS, it's awesome and uses an SQLite DB.

aidaman 9y ago

Oh my goodness is that an inane complaint.

goostavos 9y ago
Eh, I dunno. The light gamification of every. single. thing. I interact with definitely gets old. Some times I just want a tool to be a tool, not an interactive "experience" that tells me "good job!" or gives me a Gold Star after I perform random task X. If given the choice between a service that just does its job, and one that 'engages me as a user', I'd tend to choose the former most of the time -- doubly so for something like a reader.

corobo 9y ago

All I wanted from Feedly was to scroll properly. The way it scrolls killed RSS feeds for me. Maybe that's too harsh, in reality it was a shared effort between Google Reader being killed off and Feedly's scroll thing but I've not used RSS feeds for anything but podcasts since. I would love to go back to RSS feeds but my word would it take an absolute diamond of a service to pull me back