The second point is so big. Almost all alternatives was not "just" an RSS reader but had some weird crufty garbage over it. The RSS feeds never went away (of co

The second point is so big. Almost all alternatives was not "just" an RSS reader but had some weird crufty garbage over it. The RSS feeds never went away (of course some blogs got quieter over time), but other feed readers that were online were way too much oriented around the social web. Serious RSS readers were available as desktop clients, but that comes with its own sort of clunkiness.