11 ms·

We're Building A Reader

156 points by cooldeal 14y ago

webwanderings 14y ago
Digg has always been late with everything since they lost their throne at the top. I doubt the world will wait for them to deliver something new. Sites like Digg, Reddit, Tumblr etc should provide their own version of RSS readers. Wordpress.com has recently introduced their own reader and it supposedly has a feature to browse external sites. Why can't Reddit and Tumblr do the same thing?
- pavel_lishin 14y ago
  > Sites like Digg, Reddit, Tumblr etc should provide their own version of RSS readers. Why?
  - webwanderings 14y ago
    Because those of us who are used to of scrolling content from these services, can stay at one place.
  - WalterSear 14y ago
    Because it would be just as stupid as Google shutting down it's Reader.
  - pseut 14y ago
    I've wanted Tumblr to allow you to subscribe to external rss feeds for a while (I think it did at one point) -- some of he blogs I read are text heavy, some are graphics heavy, etc., and it would be nice to have separate readers optimized for the different types of content. It would be nice to be able to subscribe to "tumblrs" on the tumblr dashboard whether or not they're actually hosted on tumblr. Reddit's kind of the same thing: it would be nice to have a reader integrated with the discussion.
    - rhdoenges 14y ago
      The dashboard isn't good at telling you whether you've seen a post already and moves much too fast for traditional blogs that post once a day or less to even show up within the first few pages. I don't think Tumblr has the right UI for an RSS reader.
      - pseut 14y ago
        Sure, but there are plenty of light, "pretty" blogs that I'll browse when I have time to kill, and tumblr wouldn't be bad for that. I'm not arguing in favor of Tumblr necessarily, but specialization. I'd love Twitter to have a separate but connected rss reader, for "twitter-like" content, for example. Any of these social network or quasi social network services could offer a customized rss reader - it's like having the best JavaScript "share this page on..." button possible.
- mkr-hn 14y ago
  The wordpress.com reader barely works for blogs on wordpress.com. I don't know if it lets you add RSS feeds, but I wouldn't use it.
  - webwanderings 14y ago
    That's a different point altogether, but at least there is an associated service.
- revelation 14y ago
  The only thing Digg about this Digg is the brand Digg.
- hadem 14y ago
  Doesn't each content provider (Digg, Reddit, Tumblr, etc) providing its own RSS reader defeat the purpose of RSS in the first place? The reason I enjoyed Reader (or any RSS reader for that matter) is the fact I didn't need to visit X number of sites to read content.
  - pavel_lishin 14y ago
    I don't think it does. If Tumblr had their own reader, you wouldn't have to visit X sites - you could just visit Tumblr.
    - fluidcruft 14y ago
      If Google+ can't fathom a use for RSS, why should Tumblr?
    - hadem 14y ago
      Maybe I am misunderstanding your ideas but I guess I don't see the benefit of visiting Tumblr's RSS reader to read Tumblr. Why not just read from Tumblr's website at that point?
      - pavel_lishin 14y ago
        I think the original commenter's point was that they frequently use Tumblr's current method of reading other Tumbls, and they would prefer that other web content appear there, too. It's not visiting Tumblr's Reader to read Tumblr - it's visiting Tumblr's Reader to read everythign.
  - webwanderings 14y ago
    I see what you're saying but I am not suggesting that people would use all these services all the time. The point is that you would have a choice of "getting" your content in the application you are most comfortable with. Imagine if you are a daily user of TweetDeck and know how to filter your content (so you have relatively mastered the information overload already). Now, wouldn't it be better for you if you could pull in RSS feeds as well into TweetDeck?
- srik 14y ago
  Digg is under a new team. From what Ive seen so far, they are really quick to ship.
WalterSear 14y ago
Good for you. Don't eat the paste.
publicfig 14y ago
I'm actually fairly optimistic about this idea. Digg hasn't found its place yet really after their pivot, and I think a reader will really give them a lens to look forward with. What I'd really like to see Digg do is move towards dealing with social sharing of news not completely unlike Kippt. They could have it so that your personal feed could be a(n easily seperable) mix of both your rss feed and your friends/folowees. Then they could make their frontpage an aggregation of commonly shared stories, sortable by tags. I think that would really allow them to be a social news hub that's different than a lot of the social news hubs out there now, with the name recognition of Digg.
- niggler 14y ago
  "Digg hasn't found its place yet really after their pivot, and I think a reader will really give them a lens to look forward with." That's not clear. FTA it was much later in the roadmap, so its not clear whether stepping up that process now makes sense (or if they are reacting to current demand that is quickly dissipating as people commit to other products)
  - publicfig 14y ago
    I think stepping up any process that can get them a user base that even passively interacts with them on a regular basis is better than anything else for them right now. They're in that odd position that they have a well known name but no well known product behind it. They kind of have to play it reactionary if they're going to keep that name in the position it's in.
- HNLogInShit 14y ago
  Calling their sell-out a "pivot" is a crock. They became a conduit for spam, shilling for the same five Web sites with stories from those sites "voted" to the front page day after day. They deserved their decline into oblivion, and should be shunned perpetually. Lie to your users, go to hell.
- rpgmaker 14y ago
  RIP Digg. I think if they had just downgraded from v4 they could've retained some users (the "twitter killed digg" meme is overstated), sure they would've lost face but they at least would've kept some users.
niggler 14y ago
Doesn't this seem a bit too-little-too-late? Right now is the big shuffle, and unless there's a really big revolution I don't see another such opportunity coming for a long time.
- notatoad 14y ago
  I see two big shuffles: there's one right now, when all the proactive people are finding replacements for google reader. There will be another when google reader actually shuts down, when all the procrastinators are looking for a replacement.
baby 14y ago
It actually sounds awesome that Digg is behind it. I can already picture the frontpage of Digg made of posts that were most liked by individual users on their RSS feed. of Comments on Digg about the RSS item. Anyone sees this as a huge potential? You don't need to post anything, you just need to like your own rss feed and posts gets promoted. You can check comments in case other users are following the same rss feed as you etc...
- udfalkso 14y ago
  I tried and failed to do this about 4 years back (http://feedeachother.com http://feedeachother.com). Alas. Still think the idea has huge potential if someone does it right.
- Lockyy 14y ago
  This is really the only way I can see social features being built into an rss reader without ruining it.
kirillzubovsky 14y ago
Smart move.
barista 14y ago
It will be nice if this surfaces as an RSS feed rather than an email.
thirdstation 14y ago
> We’ve heard people say that RSS is a thing of the past, and perhaps in its current incarnation it is, Does the author mean RSS as a format or aggregated feeds being "a thing of the past"? I don't think feeds have achieved their potential yet.
sambreed 14y ago
What's digg?
- nichols 14y ago
  It's like Facebook, but for doggs.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
themgt 14y ago
I think a 2013 Reader should be an open source web app you can run yourself or pay to use as a service, which runs on a server pulling in feed data, and then as a detachable HTML5+JS+localstorage client that downloads the data and can run offline. Building another hosted RSS reader project just gets us back to step 1 in terms of one company's ability to yank away a tool that functions almost like a newspaper to many people today. NewsBlur looks like it just got a ton of new github watchers since this announcement, and would maybe be good to treat as the defacto "open RSS reader platform" leader - https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur
- pfraze 14y ago
  The ability to detach the frontend and control the storage backend was a pretty big motivation for http://grimwire.com/local/ http://grimwire.com/local/. You might implement the RSS backend to serve an environment for running RSS apps. Then you'd write the GUI as one of those apps. The separation would allow you to change backend or frontend independently.
- simonlc 14y ago
  So you're saying that we should either be willing to pay $5/m for an RSS reader service, or $5/m to host the service ourselves? Someone with a lot of feeds wouldn't be able to fit all of them in the 5 MB that DOM Storage allows. I wouldn't like an offline feed since a big majority of my feeds are videos and podcasts. As for them being able to yank away at any time, you're right, but there's going to be enough new stuff out there that it wont be a problem, this time we wont have a monopoly.
  - daave 14y ago
    > So you're saying that we should either be willing to pay $5/m for an RSS reader service, or $5/m to host the service ourselves? Why is that so unreasonable? Though, I think it's likely that the hosted solution would be much cheaper than self-hosting, since you don't need to rent one server per user, a hosted solution could be much more efficient.
- eurleif 14y ago
marknutter 14y ago
"Like many of you, we were dismayed to learn that Google will be shutting down its much-loved, if under-appreciated, Google Reader on July 1st." Somehow I doubt they are dismayed. Excited, maybe?
- jlgray 14y ago
  Step 1: Build totally awesome Google reader replacement. Step 2: ???? Step 3: Get acquired by Google.
jccalhoun 14y ago
If this is as successful as their Digg reboot then I'm sure it will have hundreds of users...
HNLogInShit 14y ago
I saw the digg.com source and said, "Screw that!"
mrwnmonm 14y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5377291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5377291
waylandsmithers 14y ago
I like that the subheadline on their front page for the story is "The Rumors Are True", implying people were talking about Digg.
chesh 14y ago
For me the dream team was GReader combined with the PostRank (Chrome Extension) to filter based on social metrics. Unfortunately PostRank was the second most important product that Google is its wisdom (and evilness) decided to shut down. For an idea of the power see: https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?key=tWri7T3f4Ex6-uVU8i9-FFQ&type=view&gid=0&f=true&sortcolid=10&sortasc=false&rowsperpage=250&pli=1&pli=1 https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?key=tWri7T3f4.... Each row of the GReader would be lighter or darker based on the PostRank or you could simply filter based on minimum PR rating. The one and only enhancement beyond this would be to integrate an Instapaper-type functionality so I have all my content in one place, whether fed by RSS, or random pages that I tag to read later as I come across them. Digg is one of the few companies that I could see pull off the social dimension successfully.
buddylw 14y ago
I really miss the social aspect of Google reader before they axed it back in 2011. It's not really social in the traditional sense, it's social in the sense that I could outsource the job of scouring feeds on various topics to other people. Everything they found interesting would be mainlined right into my reader interface so I didn't have to personally check 20 feeds on Android. I do hope that Digg can create a simple and fast interface that captures this concept without too much clutter from the more traditional social features.
shenedu 14y ago
Hi, I am the author of open source rss reader Rssminer, live demo: http://rssminer.net/demo http://rssminer.net/demo How about your guy build on top it, I can contribute the whole source code (anyway, it's open source) The reasons I do so: 1. Rss Reader needs a lot of hardware resources for storing/fetch feeds. A big company have much better resource than I can offer. 2. I can provide some paid support for rssminer's code. The reasons why it may be helpful for you guys: 1. Rssminer is fully working, you can save a lot of time, faster product 2. The code is very clean. https://github.com/shenfeng/rssminer https://github.com/shenfeng/rssminer 3. The code is very fast. In order for it to be fast, I even write an event driven http clent and server: https://github.com/http-kit/http-kit https://github.com/http-kit/http-kit If interested, drop me an email: shenedu@gmail.com
BaconJuice 14y ago
A bit off-topic, but does anyone know where I can find a very simple wordpress theme like diggs blog? It looks so beautiful and simple!
nwzpaperman 14y ago
It's exciting to see everyone interested in reading news again! It seems many people were taking it for granted.
Deprogrammer9 14y ago
Why does anyone give a shit about digg these days? FUCK EDITORS!
owenjones 14y ago
Can anyone tell me why every one of these articles has this quote or a similar on in there? "We’ve heard people say that RSS is a thing of the past, and perhaps in its current incarnation it is..." I've seen about a dozen posts on HN about Google Reader being retired so RSS readers clearly still appeal to at least this demographic. My girlfriend will also dearly miss Google Reader so it can clearly appeal to non-technical folks as well... What has replaced RSS readers, Twitter? Facebook? Reddit? As someone who doesn't use social media I would say no. Google Reader is, for me, still the quickest way to get interesting news / information. I don't understand why all the articles state RSS is dead as a fact.

156 points by cooldeal 14y ago

Digg has always been late with everything since they lost their throne at the top. I doubt the world will wait for them to deliver something new. Sites like Digg, Reddit, Tumblr etc should provide their own version of RSS readers. Wordpress.com has recently introduced their own reader and it supposedly has a feature to browse external sites. Why can't Reddit and Tumblr do the same thing?

pavel_lishin 14y ago
> Sites like Digg, Reddit, Tumblr etc should provide their own version of RSS readers. Why?
- webwanderings 14y ago
  Because those of us who are used to of scrolling content from these services, can stay at one place.
- WalterSear 14y ago
  Because it would be just as stupid as Google shutting down it's Reader.
- pseut 14y ago
  I've wanted Tumblr to allow you to subscribe to external rss feeds for a while (I think it did at one point) -- some of he blogs I read are text heavy, some are graphics heavy, etc., and it would be nice to have separate readers optimized for the different types of content. It would be nice to be able to subscribe to "tumblrs" on the tumblr dashboard whether or not they're actually hosted on tumblr. Reddit's kind of the same thing: it would be nice to have a reader integrated with the discussion.
  - rhdoenges 14y ago
    The dashboard isn't good at telling you whether you've seen a post already and moves much too fast for traditional blogs that post once a day or less to even show up within the first few pages. I don't think Tumblr has the right UI for an RSS reader.
    - pseut 14y ago
      Sure, but there are plenty of light, "pretty" blogs that I'll browse when I have time to kill, and tumblr wouldn't be bad for that. I'm not arguing in favor of Tumblr necessarily, but specialization. I'd love Twitter to have a separate but connected rss reader, for "twitter-like" content, for example. Any of these social network or quasi social network services could offer a customized rss reader - it's like having the best JavaScript "share this page on..." button possible.
mkr-hn 14y ago
The wordpress.com reader barely works for blogs on wordpress.com. I don't know if it lets you add RSS feeds, but I wouldn't use it.
- webwanderings 14y ago
  That's a different point altogether, but at least there is an associated service.
revelation 14y ago
The only thing Digg about this Digg is the brand Digg.
hadem 14y ago
Doesn't each content provider (Digg, Reddit, Tumblr, etc) providing its own RSS reader defeat the purpose of RSS in the first place? The reason I enjoyed Reader (or any RSS reader for that matter) is the fact I didn't need to visit X number of sites to read content.
- pavel_lishin 14y ago
  I don't think it does. If Tumblr had their own reader, you wouldn't have to visit X sites - you could just visit Tumblr.
  - fluidcruft 14y ago
    If Google+ can't fathom a use for RSS, why should Tumblr?
  - hadem 14y ago
    Maybe I am misunderstanding your ideas but I guess I don't see the benefit of visiting Tumblr's RSS reader to read Tumblr. Why not just read from Tumblr's website at that point?
    - pavel_lishin 14y ago
      I think the original commenter's point was that they frequently use Tumblr's current method of reading other Tumbls, and they would prefer that other web content appear there, too. It's not visiting Tumblr's Reader to read Tumblr - it's visiting Tumblr's Reader to read everythign.
- webwanderings 14y ago
  I see what you're saying but I am not suggesting that people would use all these services all the time. The point is that you would have a choice of "getting" your content in the application you are most comfortable with. Imagine if you are a daily user of TweetDeck and know how to filter your content (so you have relatively mastered the information overload already). Now, wouldn't it be better for you if you could pull in RSS feeds as well into TweetDeck?
srik 14y ago
Digg is under a new team. From what Ive seen so far, they are really quick to ship.

WalterSear 14y ago

Good for you. Don't eat the paste.

publicfig 14y ago

I'm actually fairly optimistic about this idea. Digg hasn't found its place yet really after their pivot, and I think a reader will really give them a lens to look forward with. What I'd really like to see Digg do is move towards dealing with social sharing of news not completely unlike Kippt. They could have it so that your personal feed could be a(n easily seperable) mix of both your rss feed and your friends/folowees. Then they could make their frontpage an aggregation of commonly shared stories, sortable by tags. I think that would really allow them to be a social news hub that's different than a lot of the social news hubs out there now, with the name recognition of Digg.

niggler 14y ago
"Digg hasn't found its place yet really after their pivot, and I think a reader will really give them a lens to look forward with." That's not clear. FTA it was much later in the roadmap, so its not clear whether stepping up that process now makes sense (or if they are reacting to current demand that is quickly dissipating as people commit to other products)
- publicfig 14y ago
  I think stepping up any process that can get them a user base that even passively interacts with them on a regular basis is better than anything else for them right now. They're in that odd position that they have a well known name but no well known product behind it. They kind of have to play it reactionary if they're going to keep that name in the position it's in.
HNLogInShit 14y ago
Calling their sell-out a "pivot" is a crock. They became a conduit for spam, shilling for the same five Web sites with stories from those sites "voted" to the front page day after day. They deserved their decline into oblivion, and should be shunned perpetually. Lie to your users, go to hell.
rpgmaker 14y ago
RIP Digg. I think if they had just downgraded from v4 they could've retained some users (the "twitter killed digg" meme is overstated), sure they would've lost face but they at least would've kept some users.

niggler 14y ago

Doesn't this seem a bit too-little-too-late? Right now is the big shuffle, and unless there's a really big revolution I don't see another such opportunity coming for a long time.

notatoad 14y ago
I see two big shuffles: there's one right now, when all the proactive people are finding replacements for google reader. There will be another when google reader actually shuts down, when all the procrastinators are looking for a replacement.

baby 14y ago

It actually sounds awesome that Digg is behind it. I can already picture the frontpage of Digg made of posts that were most liked by individual users on their RSS feed. of Comments on Digg about the RSS item. Anyone sees this as a huge potential? You don't need to post anything, you just need to like your own rss feed and posts gets promoted. You can check comments in case other users are following the same rss feed as you etc...

udfalkso 14y ago
I tried and failed to do this about 4 years back (http://feedeachother.com http://feedeachother.com). Alas. Still think the idea has huge potential if someone does it right.
Lockyy 14y ago
This is really the only way I can see social features being built into an rss reader without ruining it.

kirillzubovsky 14y ago

Smart move.

barista 14y ago

It will be nice if this surfaces as an RSS feed rather than an email.

thirdstation 14y ago

> We’ve heard people say that RSS is a thing of the past, and perhaps in its current incarnation it is, Does the author mean RSS as a format or aggregated feeds being "a thing of the past"? I don't think feeds have achieved their potential yet.

sambreed 14y ago

What's digg?

nichols 14y ago
It's like Facebook, but for doggs.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

themgt 14y ago

I think a 2013 Reader should be an open source web app you can run yourself or pay to use as a service, which runs on a server pulling in feed data, and then as a detachable HTML5+JS+localstorage client that downloads the data and can run offline. Building another hosted RSS reader project just gets us back to step 1 in terms of one company's ability to yank away a tool that functions almost like a newspaper to many people today. NewsBlur looks like it just got a ton of new github watchers since this announcement, and would maybe be good to treat as the defacto "open RSS reader platform" leader - https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur

pfraze 14y ago
The ability to detach the frontend and control the storage backend was a pretty big motivation for http://grimwire.com/local/ http://grimwire.com/local/. You might implement the RSS backend to serve an environment for running RSS apps. Then you'd write the GUI as one of those apps. The separation would allow you to change backend or frontend independently.
simonlc 14y ago
So you're saying that we should either be willing to pay $5/m for an RSS reader service, or $5/m to host the service ourselves? Someone with a lot of feeds wouldn't be able to fit all of them in the 5 MB that DOM Storage allows. I wouldn't like an offline feed since a big majority of my feeds are videos and podcasts. As for them being able to yank away at any time, you're right, but there's going to be enough new stuff out there that it wont be a problem, this time we wont have a monopoly.
- daave 14y ago
  > So you're saying that we should either be willing to pay $5/m for an RSS reader service, or $5/m to host the service ourselves? Why is that so unreasonable? Though, I think it's likely that the hosted solution would be much cheaper than self-hosting, since you don't need to rent one server per user, a hosted solution could be much more efficient.
eurleif 14y ago

marknutter 14y ago

"Like many of you, we were dismayed to learn that Google will be shutting down its much-loved, if under-appreciated, Google Reader on July 1st." Somehow I doubt they are dismayed. Excited, maybe?

jlgray 14y ago
Step 1: Build totally awesome Google reader replacement. Step 2: ???? Step 3: Get acquired by Google.

jccalhoun 14y ago

If this is as successful as their Digg reboot then I'm sure it will have hundreds of users...

HNLogInShit 14y ago

I saw the digg.com source and said, "Screw that!"

mrwnmonm 14y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5377291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5377291

waylandsmithers 14y ago

I like that the subheadline on their front page for the story is "The Rumors Are True", implying people were talking about Digg.

chesh 14y ago

For me the dream team was GReader combined with the PostRank (Chrome Extension) to filter based on social metrics. Unfortunately PostRank was the second most important product that Google is its wisdom (and evilness) decided to shut down. For an idea of the power see: https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?key=tWri7T3f4Ex6-uVU8i9-FFQ&type=view&gid=0&f=true&sortcolid=10&sortasc=false&rowsperpage=250&pli=1&pli=1 https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?key=tWri7T3f4.... Each row of the GReader would be lighter or darker based on the PostRank or you could simply filter based on minimum PR rating. The one and only enhancement beyond this would be to integrate an Instapaper-type functionality so I have all my content in one place, whether fed by RSS, or random pages that I tag to read later as I come across them. Digg is one of the few companies that I could see pull off the social dimension successfully.

buddylw 14y ago

I really miss the social aspect of Google reader before they axed it back in 2011. It's not really social in the traditional sense, it's social in the sense that I could outsource the job of scouring feeds on various topics to other people. Everything they found interesting would be mainlined right into my reader interface so I didn't have to personally check 20 feeds on Android. I do hope that Digg can create a simple and fast interface that captures this concept without too much clutter from the more traditional social features.

shenedu 14y ago

Hi, I am the author of open source rss reader Rssminer, live demo: http://rssminer.net/demo http://rssminer.net/demo How about your guy build on top it, I can contribute the whole source code (anyway, it's open source) The reasons I do so: 1. Rss Reader needs a lot of hardware resources for storing/fetch feeds. A big company have much better resource than I can offer. 2. I can provide some paid support for rssminer's code. The reasons why it may be helpful for you guys: 1. Rssminer is fully working, you can save a lot of time, faster product 2. The code is very clean. https://github.com/shenfeng/rssminer https://github.com/shenfeng/rssminer 3. The code is very fast. In order for it to be fast, I even write an event driven http clent and server: https://github.com/http-kit/http-kit https://github.com/http-kit/http-kit If interested, drop me an email: shenedu@gmail.com

BaconJuice 14y ago

A bit off-topic, but does anyone know where I can find a very simple wordpress theme like diggs blog? It looks so beautiful and simple!

nwzpaperman 14y ago

It's exciting to see everyone interested in reading news again! It seems many people were taking it for granted.

Deprogrammer9 14y ago

Why does anyone give a shit about digg these days? FUCK EDITORS!

owenjones 14y ago

Can anyone tell me why every one of these articles has this quote or a similar on in there? "We’ve heard people say that RSS is a thing of the past, and perhaps in its current incarnation it is..." I've seen about a dozen posts on HN about Google Reader being retired so RSS readers clearly still appeal to at least this demographic. My girlfriend will also dearly miss Google Reader so it can clearly appeal to non-technical folks as well... What has replaced RSS readers, Twitter? Facebook? Reddit? As someone who doesn't use social media I would say no. Google Reader is, for me, still the quickest way to get interesting news / information. I don't understand why all the articles state RSS is dead as a fact.