4 ms·
Those of you who don’t understand why people were attached to Reader: Please keep in mind that it’s generally not the death of the tool that we lament after all
by dpeck 6y ago
Those of you who don’t understand why people were attached to Reader: Please keep in mind that it’s generally not the death of the tool that we lament after all these years. It is the destruction of our communities there that we’re still sad about.
Imagine your favorite coffee shop, bar, church or social club ceased to be. You’d still see some of the previous members at other places, but the community as it existed is gone.
- crazygringo 6y agoWait, what was the community? I thought it was just an RSS reader. This is the first I've ever heard of a Reader "community". I'm looking it up and it doesn't appear there were forums or anything. What was the community aspect?
- seaman1921 6y agothere was no community aspect, they probably mean to say that it was their favourite hangout spot, like a library
- dpeck 6y agoNope, I don’t mean that at all. See sibling comment of yours for details.
- seaman1921 6y agothanks for clarifying!
- mattmcknight 6y agoIt allowed you to share and discuss items with a closed set of friends. It was really good for that. http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2007/12/reader-and-talk-are-friends.html http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2007/12/reader-and-talk-are... http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2011/01/more-control-over-comments-on-shared.html http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2011/01/more-control-over-c...
- dpeck 6y agoYep, though it wasn’t quite “closed” since people were after see comments from friends of friends. I had several real professional friendships start this way, and quite a few others that I followed just to see the thoughts/opinions of people in different life stages & life styles. It was a very different vibe from other “social” sites even then, and I haven’t found anywhere else that had ability to have conversations about a large breadth of topics while also going deep into them if one wanted. It had a BarCamp kind of feel to me, more like the discussions that happen at a party with a lot of people who are confident in themselves but aren’t looking to prove it to other attendees. Note that this is almost certainly some bit of romanticizing, and the communities would of course have a lot of variance but mine was dope. Fashion designers, artists, historians, a couple chefs, computer scientists, theologians, and others came together for great conversations and lots of perspectives.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y agoNot forums, but it did have social features.
- rexf 6y agoThere were social features. Since it used google accounts, there was a large base of people who were able to like your shared news items (IIRC). I didn't have a large following, but I would see people liking my shared feed items from time to time, and they could subscribe to your feed (IIRC).
- eastbayjake 6y agoI was an outer-circle member of the community of people who did the Google Reader shutdown protest in DC in 2011: https://dcist.com/story/11/10/26/click-click-google-reader-protest-s/ https://dcist.com/story/11/10/26/click-click-google-reader-p... It really did create a community atmosphere that I've only seen at cocktail/dinner parties, where everyone knows someone but you meet new friends-of-friends and maybe become friends yourselves.