8 ms·

The whole article makes for some pretty depressing reading, and touches upon some important points. For me, the most crucial and eye opening is the stark contra

The whole article makes for some pretty depressing reading, and touches upon some important points. For me, the most crucial and eye opening is the stark contrast of the relatively open ecosystem we had back in 2005 to what we have today. You can't help but feel uncomfortable about the whole direction we're taking with tightly controlled silos of information (Twitter, Facebook, G+, etc.) using extremely limited, or highly monetized, API access, when you read something like this: "One thing that’s definitely coming (and some of these already exist, although haven’t yet been made public) is extremely deep API support. Our general plan here is to expose nearly everything in NewsGator Online via API, and allow folks to build applications that leverage our platform in unique ways." Google is just as guilty as several other parties of bringing about the situation we have now. I get the fact that everyone is looking for ways of increasing revenue, but they're doing it at the expense of openness, instead of leveraging that openness (see RSS for example) and building services and added value on top of it. I hope the death of Reader serves as a wake up call on several fronts.

anoncow 14y ago
the challenge will be how you make money without stifling openness(and thus competition) and privacy.
bambax 14y ago
But Twitter doesn't make any money, and Facebook not that much. The bulk of Google's revenue comes from leveraging the openness of the Web; were there only Facebooks and Twitters there would be no Google Search because there would be nothing to index. This may be completely off, but the killing of Reader looks like a desperate move to help Google+: since Google can't kill Facebook, they're willing to hurt themselves instead -- to cut their left arm so that their right arm can grow stronger. If this is indeed the case, it's very shortsighted.
- MatthewPhillips 14y ago
  Facebook definitely make a lot of money.
- shortformblog 14y ago
  Twitter makes more money on mobile than Facebook does. http://mashable.com/2012/09/06/twitter-mobile-ad-revenue/ http://mashable.com/2012/09/06/twitter-mobile-ad-revenue/
- Samuel_Michon 14y ago
  "The bulk of Google's revenue comes from leveraging the openness of the Web" Does not compute. Google makes its money selling ads. Those ads appear mainly on Google's website, which is very much closed. Nobody knows how Google comes up with search results and why specific ads are shown. "were there only Facebooks and Twitters there would be no Google Search because there would be nothing to index." Google existed before social media: before Myspace, before Friendster, even before LiveJournal. When Google started, 'blog' wasn't even a word and Geocities was one of the most popular sites on the web. Social media is still a small part of what happens on the web. But imagine, were there only Facebooks and Twitters, surely Google would be offering ads there.
  - bambax 14y ago
    Google displays ads on search results that are possible because it indexes the open web. No open web > no index > no search results. Were there only closed systems, there would be no way of building a transversal search system.
    - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
      If it's displayed on a networked computer, it can be indexed – Facebook and Twitter can be indexed, it just takes more effort. But let's imagine there would be no way for Google to index the web, then they would find other places to put their ads. Google is an advertising company, not an Internet search company.
      - icebraining 14y ago
        Facebook and Twitter can be indexed, it just takes more effort. It's not really about effort; it's about the fact that FB & Twitter don't really want Google indexing them. But let's imagine there would be no way for Google to index the web, then they would find other places to put their ads. What makes you think they'd be successful in finding such places?
        Samuel_Michon 14y ago
- dtsingletary 14y ago
  Twitter does make money on its API. It's done through channel partnerships. Is it as much as advertising? No. But still significant. Twitter's API is still sufficiently open. There's plenty of data to be had. The limitations and constraints breeds creativity, and we'll finally see new integrations and ideas that do something new rather than simple enhancements and user-annoyance-fixing-as-a-product.
- chetanahuja 14y ago
  " but the killing of Reader looks like a desperate move to help Google+ " I'd +1 that.
orangethirty 14y ago
I saw this situation coming a long while ago. These companies are now turning against those who made them what thu are. Worst is that they turned against us, the hackers. No or limited API access, real name policies, lack of gener privacy, no way to get your data back, etc. All of this as a result of these companies being run by the traditional corporate drone. This is why Nuuton is being developed, by me, a hacker with business experience. I know how the value Of a company depends by the hacker community that forms around it. When I say value I don't mean money. I mean how well the company is poised to do some re innovation and provide a good dependable service to the community at large. Nuuton features a strict privacy policy with no re names, no tracking, no bubbles, and private data as a default. It will also allow for easy access to your data. All of it. To the hacker community, it has and will have a robust collection of APIs for you to use without draconian limitations. Best of all, Nuuton is not being developed as a one way lottery ticket. I don't need or want the money. I'm building it because I have had it up to here with dealing with these abusive companies.
- gnosis 14y ago
  I hope what you're building is open source and resides 100% on the client's machine. Because if it's closed source or makes use of your servers, then it can't be trusted, no matter what lofty rhetoric you use to advertise it. The fact is that if it makes use of your servers, you have the power to spy on the people using your service. You may claim that you won't, and provide a lovely privacy policy, but there's no way for the users to make sure you're actually adhering to those policies. Then it comes down to trust, and some of us don't have a lot of trust left. This is why I use client-based, open source RSS readers like Newsbeuter,[1] and will not be moving to any web-based reader, no matter what features they have or how concerned they claim to be about privacy. That said, if I had to use a web-based service, I'd much rather use one that claimed to have a commitment to privacy than one that didn't. So kudos to you for that. [1] - http://www.newsbeuter.org/index.html http://www.newsbeuter.org/index.html
  - amirmc 14y ago
    One of the issues in the multi-device world is that you want to have some kind of sync across those devices. From what I can gather, this was one of the most useful features of using Reader as the backend and I can't see how to replicate it without having some kind of central server. This is a more general problem and (I believe) it will become more important in the coming years.
dhimes 14y ago
So can we all now please get back to LibreOffice and syncing and leave google documents for temporary or short-term work?
- pekk 14y ago
  Google Docs IS way more convenient, way less setup and feels faster... also, most of the world does not use LibreOffice
- myko 14y ago
  What's wrong with Drive? Doesn't it export to open formats rather easily?
  - zanny 14y ago
    In the word processing space, the cost to switch providers is much higher because unlike in the rss space, the average user isn't usually technically inclined. It is why MSword persists as a huge market leader, even after its ribbon interface turned it into crap, and there were competitive FOSS alternatives to a hundred dollar purchase price. Google docs as a consumer use case isn't bad - hopefully you have the brain to know how to get all your drive content and switch when they eventually kill Google Docs as not profitable enough. The problem is the business use case - and this comes from the popularity in the consumer space. The collaberative features of docs/drive is even more applicable in a workplace environment, and if businesses that hire "less technically inclined" people and have to hand hold them into getting used to it, and are presented with a demand to switch, the transition overhead would be massive. It is actually a strong business interest to use FOSS because I bet it would cost less to get a junior developer to manage a fork of an old interface / feature that was depreciated in mainline and keep the security up to date than it would cost an actually big business to switch their entire software suite away from a depreciated closed product / one that radically shifts.
    - criley 14y ago
      I strongly prefer ribbon to the endless dropdowns and modals of LibreOffice and versions of Word that are more than a decade old. I never understood the hate myself, LibreOffice and Old Word have one of the worst uis out there. It's like the Geocities of productivity software.
magicalist 14y ago
Except Twitter used to offer "extremely deep API support...allow[ing] folks to build applications that leverage [their] platform in unique ways." And then they couldn't make any money that way. I'm really not sure you have a good example of a loss of an open ecosystem here. NewsGator's plans were to pretty much create the equivalent of the (unofficial) Google Reader API, which, while not replacing RSS (the actual open format), does notably reduce its role. Moreover, for those who apparently don't remember, NewsGator actually did release their API. The API and their free reader software is what they shut down in 2009. You can blame that on Google, who did indeed retain the lion's share of users, or you could blame the self defeating business plan of providing a completely open API for free even while it costs money to run. A NewsGator API is not a loss in terms of a loss of an open ecosystem (and Bloglines was definitely not a loss). If you want open, you need a real federated protocol. Like RSS. Meanwhile, this article says "RSS industry" in the headline, but it's about nothing like that. The author says it himself: "No, Google Reader’s real competition back in its early days was not client software but services that aggregated RSS feeds and synchronized them across multiple devices." You can't embrace, extend, and extinguish services that have no standard format. RSS is doing just fine. What was lost here was a UI and a service, which leaves us with user migration pain and a loss of continuity of history (due to indefinite feed history). We'll likely always need some services. Yes, I can run a feed aggregator on my home machine, but it's kind of a waste, and not everyone has stable IP addresses they can use to sync across devices. Instead of giving up on services, what we need to learn from this is to make sure the next services we allow ourselves to depend on don't have control of our history, both individually and collectively. Notably Facebook, Twitter, and G+ don't fit this bill, or fit it only partially. (Unfortunately, our collective history on those services is complicated by visibility/access by person controls, so maybe there isn't a perfect solution. I know I can use takeout to download my posts on G+, for instance, but what about my comments on others' posts, and what about those posts themselves as context for my comments? And what about the major news of the day, even if I didn't comment? Sigh...we need a modern usenet...)
- ahoyhere 14y ago
  "And then [Twitter] couldn't make any money that way." Hold the phone. Did they actually try to make money that way?

anoncow 14y ago

the challenge will be how you make money without stifling openness(and thus competition) and privacy.

bambax 14y ago

But Twitter doesn't make any money, and Facebook not that much. The bulk of Google's revenue comes from leveraging the openness of the Web; were there only Facebooks and Twitters there would be no Google Search because there would be nothing to index. This may be completely off, but the killing of Reader looks like a desperate move to help Google+: since Google can't kill Facebook, they're willing to hurt themselves instead -- to cut their left arm so that their right arm can grow stronger. If this is indeed the case, it's very shortsighted.

MatthewPhillips 14y ago
Facebook definitely make a lot of money.
shortformblog 14y ago
Twitter makes more money on mobile than Facebook does. http://mashable.com/2012/09/06/twitter-mobile-ad-revenue/ http://mashable.com/2012/09/06/twitter-mobile-ad-revenue/
Samuel_Michon 14y ago
"The bulk of Google's revenue comes from leveraging the openness of the Web" Does not compute. Google makes its money selling ads. Those ads appear mainly on Google's website, which is very much closed. Nobody knows how Google comes up with search results and why specific ads are shown. "were there only Facebooks and Twitters there would be no Google Search because there would be nothing to index." Google existed before social media: before Myspace, before Friendster, even before LiveJournal. When Google started, 'blog' wasn't even a word and Geocities was one of the most popular sites on the web. Social media is still a small part of what happens on the web. But imagine, were there only Facebooks and Twitters, surely Google would be offering ads there.
- bambax 14y ago
  Google displays ads on search results that are possible because it indexes the open web. No open web > no index > no search results. Were there only closed systems, there would be no way of building a transversal search system.
  - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
    If it's displayed on a networked computer, it can be indexed – Facebook and Twitter can be indexed, it just takes more effort. But let's imagine there would be no way for Google to index the web, then they would find other places to put their ads. Google is an advertising company, not an Internet search company.
    - icebraining 14y ago
      Facebook and Twitter can be indexed, it just takes more effort. It's not really about effort; it's about the fact that FB & Twitter don't really want Google indexing them. But let's imagine there would be no way for Google to index the web, then they would find other places to put their ads. What makes you think they'd be successful in finding such places?
      - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
dtsingletary 14y ago
Twitter does make money on its API. It's done through channel partnerships. Is it as much as advertising? No. But still significant. Twitter's API is still sufficiently open. There's plenty of data to be had. The limitations and constraints breeds creativity, and we'll finally see new integrations and ideas that do something new rather than simple enhancements and user-annoyance-fixing-as-a-product.
chetanahuja 14y ago
" but the killing of Reader looks like a desperate move to help Google+ " I'd +1 that.

orangethirty 14y ago

I saw this situation coming a long while ago. These companies are now turning against those who made them what thu are. Worst is that they turned against us, the hackers. No or limited API access, real name policies, lack of gener privacy, no way to get your data back, etc. All of this as a result of these companies being run by the traditional corporate drone. This is why Nuuton is being developed, by me, a hacker with business experience. I know how the value Of a company depends by the hacker community that forms around it. When I say value I don't mean money. I mean how well the company is poised to do some re innovation and provide a good dependable service to the community at large. Nuuton features a strict privacy policy with no re names, no tracking, no bubbles, and private data as a default. It will also allow for easy access to your data. All of it. To the hacker community, it has and will have a robust collection of APIs for you to use without draconian limitations. Best of all, Nuuton is not being developed as a one way lottery ticket. I don't need or want the money. I'm building it because I have had it up to here with dealing with these abusive companies.

gnosis 14y ago
I hope what you're building is open source and resides 100% on the client's machine. Because if it's closed source or makes use of your servers, then it can't be trusted, no matter what lofty rhetoric you use to advertise it. The fact is that if it makes use of your servers, you have the power to spy on the people using your service. You may claim that you won't, and provide a lovely privacy policy, but there's no way for the users to make sure you're actually adhering to those policies. Then it comes down to trust, and some of us don't have a lot of trust left. This is why I use client-based, open source RSS readers like Newsbeuter,[1] and will not be moving to any web-based reader, no matter what features they have or how concerned they claim to be about privacy. That said, if I had to use a web-based service, I'd much rather use one that claimed to have a commitment to privacy than one that didn't. So kudos to you for that. [1] - http://www.newsbeuter.org/index.html http://www.newsbeuter.org/index.html
- amirmc 14y ago
  One of the issues in the multi-device world is that you want to have some kind of sync across those devices. From what I can gather, this was one of the most useful features of using Reader as the backend and I can't see how to replicate it without having some kind of central server. This is a more general problem and (I believe) it will become more important in the coming years.

dhimes 14y ago

So can we all now please get back to LibreOffice and syncing and leave google documents for temporary or short-term work?

pekk 14y ago
Google Docs IS way more convenient, way less setup and feels faster... also, most of the world does not use LibreOffice
myko 14y ago
What's wrong with Drive? Doesn't it export to open formats rather easily?
- zanny 14y ago
  In the word processing space, the cost to switch providers is much higher because unlike in the rss space, the average user isn't usually technically inclined. It is why MSword persists as a huge market leader, even after its ribbon interface turned it into crap, and there were competitive FOSS alternatives to a hundred dollar purchase price. Google docs as a consumer use case isn't bad - hopefully you have the brain to know how to get all your drive content and switch when they eventually kill Google Docs as not profitable enough. The problem is the business use case - and this comes from the popularity in the consumer space. The collaberative features of docs/drive is even more applicable in a workplace environment, and if businesses that hire "less technically inclined" people and have to hand hold them into getting used to it, and are presented with a demand to switch, the transition overhead would be massive. It is actually a strong business interest to use FOSS because I bet it would cost less to get a junior developer to manage a fork of an old interface / feature that was depreciated in mainline and keep the security up to date than it would cost an actually big business to switch their entire software suite away from a depreciated closed product / one that radically shifts.
  - criley 14y ago
    I strongly prefer ribbon to the endless dropdowns and modals of LibreOffice and versions of Word that are more than a decade old. I never understood the hate myself, LibreOffice and Old Word have one of the worst uis out there. It's like the Geocities of productivity software.

magicalist 14y ago

Except Twitter used to offer "extremely deep API support...allow[ing] folks to build applications that leverage [their] platform in unique ways." And then they couldn't make any money that way. I'm really not sure you have a good example of a loss of an open ecosystem here. NewsGator's plans were to pretty much create the equivalent of the (unofficial) Google Reader API, which, while not replacing RSS (the actual open format), does notably reduce its role. Moreover, for those who apparently don't remember, NewsGator actually did release their API. The API and their free reader software is what they shut down in 2009. You can blame that on Google, who did indeed retain the lion's share of users, or you could blame the self defeating business plan of providing a completely open API for free even while it costs money to run. A NewsGator API is not a loss in terms of a loss of an open ecosystem (and Bloglines was definitely not a loss). If you want open, you need a real federated protocol. Like RSS. Meanwhile, this article says "RSS industry" in the headline, but it's about nothing like that. The author says it himself: "No, Google Reader’s real competition back in its early days was not client software but services that aggregated RSS feeds and synchronized them across multiple devices." You can't embrace, extend, and extinguish services that have no standard format. RSS is doing just fine. What was lost here was a UI and a service, which leaves us with user migration pain and a loss of continuity of history (due to indefinite feed history). We'll likely always need some services. Yes, I can run a feed aggregator on my home machine, but it's kind of a waste, and not everyone has stable IP addresses they can use to sync across devices. Instead of giving up on services, what we need to learn from this is to make sure the next services we allow ourselves to depend on don't have control of our history, both individually and collectively. Notably Facebook, Twitter, and G+ don't fit this bill, or fit it only partially. (Unfortunately, our collective history on those services is complicated by visibility/access by person controls, so maybe there isn't a perfect solution. I know I can use takeout to download my posts on G+, for instance, but what about my comments on others' posts, and what about those posts themselves as context for my comments? And what about the major news of the day, even if I didn't comment? Sigh...we need a modern usenet...)

ahoyhere 14y ago
"And then [Twitter] couldn't make any money that way." Hold the phone. Did they actually try to make money that way?