4 ms·

So would now (now that everyone has left the market except the winner) then be a good time to create a new, better, nextgen kind of RSS reader product (or somet

So would now (now that everyone has left the market except the winner) then be a good time to create a new, better, nextgen kind of RSS reader product (or something similar)? Something to disrupt Google Reader, the new market leader? Will the pendulum swing back from centralized (twitter, fb) to distributed (rss)? Similar question: is podcasting ever going to go anywhere? Would now not be a good time to create a product for that market, now that it's been abandoned by everyone for a few years? Or are both these technologies/markets evolutionary dead-ends, ie. never going to go anywhere anymore? Edit: I did a quick mockup :) http://poorbuthappy.com/ease/archives/2010/09/10/4765/time-for-a-new-type-of-feed-people-reader http://poorbuthappy.com/ease/archives/2010/09/10/4765/time-f...

pquerna 16y ago
I think there is an unmet market, and the consolidation into twitter/facebook won't meet the needs of all people. Bloglines and Google Reader both were flawed in providing the user with too much information; Facebook's feeds and twitters short memory prevent a buildup of thousands of unread things, and were better about promoting what was important.
kmfrk 16y ago
There has been a void for a great - heck, decent - RSS reader in plenty of years. Maybe Mac users didn't notice because they have the privilege of NetNewsWire. As I said, I'm trying out Fever, and I'm sure others are willing to use a paid service.
- hvs 16y ago
  I've used Fever for well over a year, and I love it. It's much, much better than Google Reader. (for those who don't know where it is: http://www.feedafever.com/ http://www.feedafever.com/ )
johns 16y ago
People are still trying. Feedingo http://feedingo.com/ http://feedingo.com/ recently launched. I think it's a 1 or 2 person startup. I think the long-term future of RSS feeds is integrated with my other social streams somehow that allows me to see all of them. Twitter could probably eliminate the need for a reader for a lot of people if they let you follow RSS feeds like you follow people.
skymt 16y ago
I've been working on a new style of RSS reader in my spare time for a month or so now. Current RSS readers treat RSS like email, which pressures the user to at least glance at every item. I have 177 subscriptions in Google Reader, so you can imagine how much of a time-suck it's become. Some ideas to solve this: (1) eliminate unread-item counts from the UI, and (2) introduce Usenet-style scoring and some sort of smart (Bayesian?) filtering. The goal is to allow the user to decide how much time to spend reading blogs: if she only has time to read 5 things before getting back to work, she simply sorts today's unread items by score and opens the first 5. Unfortunately, I'm not actually a good programmer, so I haven't gotten far. If someone skilled would like to implement this, I'd be grateful.
- duopixel 16y ago
  You could try out Planetaki (http://www.planetaki.com http://www.planetaki.com) it doesn't do anything fancy, just just puts all your favorite websites on a single page (full disclosure: I used to work for the same company that made it). It's a relief from the task oriented feed readers. Pro tip: once you sign up you can import your websites from google reader at planetaki.com/username/import (not linked yet because it's in beta).
Kilimanjaro 16y ago
I created http://www.hackerblogs.com http://www.hackerblogs.com to fill my need for news about programming. Since then I rarely use google reader. I like the river of news approach better than the categorized feeds. I don't care if I miss a couple of days of news, they don't pile up anymore and I don't feel like I have to read them all to catch up.

pquerna 16y ago

I think there is an unmet market, and the consolidation into twitter/facebook won't meet the needs of all people. Bloglines and Google Reader both were flawed in providing the user with too much information; Facebook's feeds and twitters short memory prevent a buildup of thousands of unread things, and were better about promoting what was important.

kmfrk 16y ago

There has been a void for a great - heck, decent - RSS reader in plenty of years. Maybe Mac users didn't notice because they have the privilege of NetNewsWire. As I said, I'm trying out Fever, and I'm sure others are willing to use a paid service.

hvs 16y ago
I've used Fever for well over a year, and I love it. It's much, much better than Google Reader. (for those who don't know where it is: http://www.feedafever.com/ http://www.feedafever.com/ )

johns 16y ago

People are still trying. Feedingo http://feedingo.com/ http://feedingo.com/ recently launched. I think it's a 1 or 2 person startup. I think the long-term future of RSS feeds is integrated with my other social streams somehow that allows me to see all of them. Twitter could probably eliminate the need for a reader for a lot of people if they let you follow RSS feeds like you follow people.

skymt 16y ago

I've been working on a new style of RSS reader in my spare time for a month or so now. Current RSS readers treat RSS like email, which pressures the user to at least glance at every item. I have 177 subscriptions in Google Reader, so you can imagine how much of a time-suck it's become. Some ideas to solve this: (1) eliminate unread-item counts from the UI, and (2) introduce Usenet-style scoring and some sort of smart (Bayesian?) filtering. The goal is to allow the user to decide how much time to spend reading blogs: if she only has time to read 5 things before getting back to work, she simply sorts today's unread items by score and opens the first 5. Unfortunately, I'm not actually a good programmer, so I haven't gotten far. If someone skilled would like to implement this, I'd be grateful.

duopixel 16y ago
You could try out Planetaki (http://www.planetaki.com http://www.planetaki.com) it doesn't do anything fancy, just just puts all your favorite websites on a single page (full disclosure: I used to work for the same company that made it). It's a relief from the task oriented feed readers. Pro tip: once you sign up you can import your websites from google reader at planetaki.com/username/import (not linked yet because it's in beta).

Kilimanjaro 16y ago

I created http://www.hackerblogs.com http://www.hackerblogs.com to fill my need for news about programming. Since then I rarely use google reader. I like the river of news approach better than the categorized feeds. I don't care if I miss a couple of days of news, they don't pile up anymore and I don't feel like I have to read them all to catch up.