hat tip to timb for this Hacker News thread on the demise of bloglines and the post-newsreader environment generally. Several non-Google alternative suggestions are made, for example, feedingo.
Possibly we have a situation similar to the old sailor saw "water, water everywhere..." A million feeds out there and no good way to organize them. Would rather get information and opinion from blogs than the lyin' mainstream media that brought us the Iraq War (and still hasn't owned up to its role), loved Bush, and childishly equates rational critique with "hippies" but how to consolidate all this data?
A couple of good individual comments. Jay Neely:
I reluctantly switched from Bloglines to Google Reader a year or so ago when it became clear they weren't improving their product any further. Unfortunately, I've been just as frustrated with Google's lack of innovation. And it seems like the new services I've seen (Pinyadda, feedingo) are focused on dumbing down RSS for casual users rather than serving the needs of information professionals.
And this subthread:
pquerna:
I think there is an unmet market, and the consolidation into twitter/facebook won't meet the needs of all people.
Bloglines and Google Reader both were flawed in providing the user with too much information; Facebook's feeds and twitters short memory prevent a buildup of thousands of unread things, and were better about promoting what was important.johns:
People are still trying. Feedingo http://feedingo.com/ recently launched. I think it's a 1 or 2 person startup.
I think the long-term future of RSS feeds is integrated with my other social streams somehow that allows me to see all of them. Twitter could probably eliminate the need for a reader for a lot of people if they let you follow RSS feeds like you follow people.Kilimanjaro:
I created http://www.hackerblogs.com to fill my need for news about programming. Since then I rarely use google reader.
I like the river of news approach better than the categorized feeds. I don't care if I miss a couple of days of news, they don't pile up anymore and I don't feel like I have to read them all to catch up.kmfrk:
There has been a void for a great - heck, decent - RSS reader in plenty of years. Maybe Mac users didn't notice because they have the privilege of NetNewsWire.
As I said, I'm trying out Fever, and I'm sure others are willing to use a paid service.
Someone else mentions the Newsfox plugin for Firefox. Will check out some of the suggestions in the thread and report back.