4 ms·

not the reader though

by akho 2y ago

chr15m 2y ago
Never forget.
szundi 2y ago
not the reader indeed
dingaling 2y ago
It's strange to see the naivety around Reader. If Facebook had created it, people would recognise the initiative to gate-keep, regulate and curate the Wild West of RSS. "They're trying to keep you inside their walled garden!"
- mattmanser 2y ago
  It was from a time where Google's ethos was still "Don't be evil" and generally speaking the naked greed triggered by AdSense hadn't infected the rest of the company yet. So I think a lot of nostalgia is not just for the reader but also for the company Google used to be. I wonder if in 20 years time there will be the next generation of programmers sneering over vapour-ware Google products while middle managers still buy them products because "no-one ever got fired for buying Google".
- akho 2y ago
  Reader made tons of people use RSS who otherwise wouldn’t, and who now don’t. It did not live long enough to become a villain (though it certainly would have — there is no reason why G wouldn’t have added recommendations, an algo feed, and all it brings). Therefore it’s remembered well.
  - mattmaroon 2y ago
    Reader died because people were switching to social media. Reader also had no vendor lock in at all. There’s no network effect like Facebook. There’s no massive infrastructure demands like Google. No corporate sales process like Oracle, Microsoft, etc. You could very easily create a competitor and after it died, few even tried to replace it. I miss it but not enough to find another RSS reader. You’re never really the villain if there are viable alternatives and next to no switching cost. It would have been hard to make that product evil.
    - starkparker 2y ago
      > Reader died because people were switching to social media. Which especially sucks, because its friend-of-a-friend model for making comments visible on shared items was better for discovering interesting people, constructively limiting the social impact of popular posts, reducing the dangers of unintentionally poor posts, and disincentivizing trolling than any social network has implemented since. For the few people who even knew Reader had a social network—a group which certainly didn't include Google—it was a better social network than any of the ones credited with killing it.
      - mattmaroon 2y ago
        I think it was just as much that the people who wrote blogs were switching to writing in the walled gardens of social media as it was the consumers. But yeah, I greatly prefer the days of blogs and RSS readers. Now you have Substack and Medium and such, which are pretty decent.
      - immibis 2y ago
        The Fediverse is a bit like that. Anyone can post replies on things, but they don't spread through the whole network, only to people who are following the replier, and people on the replier's server, and the person who posted the thing being replied to.
        stephen_g 2y ago
        It doesn’t seem to work quite like that. I don’t know the technical details, but I definitely see replies from people I don’t follow, from other instances, on posts of people I don’t follow on different (again) instances from mine and the replies. Perhaps it could be that I’m seeing replies from people that others on my instance follow? Or perhaps there’s some other mechanism to fetch replies.
        immibis 2y ago
        Probably that. Actually if your server receives the reply for any reason, it displays it, usually. There isn't a mechanism to fetch replies, so this is a kind of accidental filtering, while ATproto is the opposite and tries to make everything globally visible. I use my own server with only me, so it only receives replies because I'm following the person who replied or their whole-server feed.
- rpastuszak 2y ago
  These were different times, people hadn't burned themselves on Embrace, extend, and extinguish that much yet.
- samastur 2y ago
  Because we miss what Reader was and not what it could have become. As a more prolific blog writer at the time I also liked that their bot would include number of people who were subscribed to my blog in their User Agent.
  - mrmanner 2y ago
    > As a more prolific blog writer at the time I also liked that their bot would include number of people who were subscribed to my blog in their User Agent. Something I generally appreciate with Google: The level of craftsmanship and the amount of elegant designs like this they come up with. (There are also… other things, but their standards are high compared to many competitors.)
- addicted 2y ago
  That’s not how I remember Reader at all. I never used the web interface. Google Reader provided syncing for nearly every 3rd party RSS app. It wasn’t just a walled garden. It was also critical infrastructure for most RSS apps at the time.

not the reader though

by akho 2y ago

not the reader though

chr15m 2y ago

Never forget.

szundi 2y ago

not the reader indeed

dingaling 2y ago

It's strange to see the naivety around Reader. If Facebook had created it, people would recognise the initiative to gate-keep, regulate and curate the Wild West of RSS. "They're trying to keep you inside their walled garden!"

mattmanser 2y ago
It was from a time where Google's ethos was still "Don't be evil" and generally speaking the naked greed triggered by AdSense hadn't infected the rest of the company yet. So I think a lot of nostalgia is not just for the reader but also for the company Google used to be. I wonder if in 20 years time there will be the next generation of programmers sneering over vapour-ware Google products while middle managers still buy them products because "no-one ever got fired for buying Google".
akho 2y ago
Reader made tons of people use RSS who otherwise wouldn’t, and who now don’t. It did not live long enough to become a villain (though it certainly would have — there is no reason why G wouldn’t have added recommendations, an algo feed, and all it brings). Therefore it’s remembered well.
- mattmaroon 2y ago
  Reader died because people were switching to social media. Reader also had no vendor lock in at all. There’s no network effect like Facebook. There’s no massive infrastructure demands like Google. No corporate sales process like Oracle, Microsoft, etc. You could very easily create a competitor and after it died, few even tried to replace it. I miss it but not enough to find another RSS reader. You’re never really the villain if there are viable alternatives and next to no switching cost. It would have been hard to make that product evil.
  - starkparker 2y ago
    > Reader died because people were switching to social media. Which especially sucks, because its friend-of-a-friend model for making comments visible on shared items was better for discovering interesting people, constructively limiting the social impact of popular posts, reducing the dangers of unintentionally poor posts, and disincentivizing trolling than any social network has implemented since. For the few people who even knew Reader had a social network—a group which certainly didn't include Google—it was a better social network than any of the ones credited with killing it.
    - mattmaroon 2y ago
      I think it was just as much that the people who wrote blogs were switching to writing in the walled gardens of social media as it was the consumers. But yeah, I greatly prefer the days of blogs and RSS readers. Now you have Substack and Medium and such, which are pretty decent.
    - immibis 2y ago
      The Fediverse is a bit like that. Anyone can post replies on things, but they don't spread through the whole network, only to people who are following the replier, and people on the replier's server, and the person who posted the thing being replied to.
      - stephen_g 2y ago
        It doesn’t seem to work quite like that. I don’t know the technical details, but I definitely see replies from people I don’t follow, from other instances, on posts of people I don’t follow on different (again) instances from mine and the replies. Perhaps it could be that I’m seeing replies from people that others on my instance follow? Or perhaps there’s some other mechanism to fetch replies.
        immibis 2y ago
        Probably that. Actually if your server receives the reply for any reason, it displays it, usually. There isn't a mechanism to fetch replies, so this is a kind of accidental filtering, while ATproto is the opposite and tries to make everything globally visible. I use my own server with only me, so it only receives replies because I'm following the person who replied or their whole-server feed.
rpastuszak 2y ago
These were different times, people hadn't burned themselves on Embrace, extend, and extinguish that much yet.
samastur 2y ago
Because we miss what Reader was and not what it could have become. As a more prolific blog writer at the time I also liked that their bot would include number of people who were subscribed to my blog in their User Agent.
- mrmanner 2y ago
  > As a more prolific blog writer at the time I also liked that their bot would include number of people who were subscribed to my blog in their User Agent. Something I generally appreciate with Google: The level of craftsmanship and the amount of elegant designs like this they come up with. (There are also… other things, but their standards are high compared to many competitors.)
addicted 2y ago
That’s not how I remember Reader at all. I never used the web interface. Google Reader provided syncing for nearly every 3rd party RSS app. It wasn’t just a walled garden. It was also critical infrastructure for most RSS apps at the time.