I believe most users are currently in a "searching" phase, and have joined more than one alternative, so this sudden growth might be misleadding. That said, for now, Feedly is my favorite alternative, so good luck.
A good lower limit. Not everyone has the time or inclination to take immediate action. I'm a heavy user of Google Reader and I haven't yet taken an action. I probably won't for at least a few weeks.
What is baffling is that Google can't or won't monetize a product with that many users.
Gathering a specific demographic, such as Greader's is the dream of many startups. Specific demographics may require specific monetization strategies, but that hardly makes the business a flop.
Sometimes, to score a goal you need to move the goal post. In this case, use a different monetization strategy.
Agreed. I'm a big Google Reader user, and will inevitably be trying out Feedly, but just haven't had the chance yet.
Judging by the amount of people I've spoken too over the last few days, there's a whole lot more than 500,000 of us. I'd love to see how many people Google considers not worth their time. I'd happily pay for Reader.
I'd love to give The Old Reader a try... but when signing in through google, they seem to want "Manage My Contacts" permission.. there is no legitimate reason for needing to see my contacts to sign up. I'm pretty mindful of Android app permissions as well.
If it said that it was asking for it and why, I may have allowed it, in any case it doesn't seem to ask for that anymore... :) Now, if my import would process already.
In the last two days only 500 people in front of me have left the queue. Feedly definitely gets point for their speed, but as others have stated the layout just isn't for me.
Same here... I read all my news through Reeder on the iPad. I won't be taking action until I find out what services they plan to add to replace Google Reader.
Exactly. I'm waiting for word from the Reeder and NetNewsWire developers. Depending on the solutions (and timeframe) they come up with, I'm staying with Reeder or going back to NetNewsWire.
This probably won't help. Google projects are typically built to run on their very specific infrastructure. It's unlikely that an open sourced version would be viable outside of Google. It's always possible though.
Maybe they could release a version that would run on AppEngine and customers could just pay for their own or something.
Google can't open source Google Reader even if it wanted to because, to make connections and recommendations it used Google's Crawler which is part of the rest of Google's infastructure - something which Google definitely won't open source. As well as using Google's Crawler, the Google Reader team created separate recommendations to improve Google Reader and those people don't come cheap either - and giving up that knowledge is valuable to Google's competitors.
Or it's people who have been thinking about using an RSS client and got caught up in the deluge of alternatives suddenly being offered much more loudly. /shrug
It's interesting to see how different people's opinions can be. Feedly, for me, was a headache wrapped in CSS. The whole thing actually made me ridiculously angry (yes, really, and I'm normally a veeery calm guy)... so for me the search continues. I'm glad it's not quite as difficult for other people to find a suitable replacement. :)
I've tried both feedly and news blur at this point and don't see myself using either going forward. While both can count me as a user right now feedly doesn't provide a method to delete your profile without emailing them and I haven't bothered to see if newsblur does. I doubt their active user count will be nearly as large.
Glad you like it. I started working on it about four years ago. It's been online for about a year.
I am working on opml import and making it easier / more intuitive to add feeds.
I have had trouble with the signup form for the last few days which was the worst time for it to fail. I thought I had the bug fixed yesterday but I will double check.
Thanks for the feedback. It's a work in progress but I am going to keep improving it.
If you have anymore suggestions I am open to all feedback.
yeah and nope, toki.net was not my first but my third try.
i am somehow not able to login with two different browsers (opera mobile and chrome) to log in. only firefox worked.
my new account there is "toki1". but i havent been able to add feeds somehow. the input box does not to react when i click submit.
feel free to use me as test user. contact me via the mail i gave with my account data. i am rather busy today, but from tomorrow on i will have more time.... :)
You are right about most user being in the searching mode. The fact is, Google Reader kept many people hooked. So none of the searching will yield any good result for many people (because they are so heavily used to of GR).
I am not getting good vibes out of Feedly even though it is getting unusually large number of mentions.
Since I like the searching, reading and organizing experience I have in the email clients I use, I decided to give Blogtrottr a shot: it sends you the contents of your RSS feeds by email, you can decided whether to get an email for each post or a daily digest (there are optiones, too). Looks pretty good so far.
I tried feedly, the old reader, and newsblur. The old reader is nice, but no mobile :-(. Newsblur is a mess ... i want a reader that gets out of my way. The only thing it really needs to do is let me organize things my way. Newsblur has that intelligence nonsense ... i already curated and organized. I don't need more. Sorry - i don't want to share with others either. It's for me. The interface has so much going on. I can't understand why HNers like it so much. Feedly is the (im)perfect choice so far. I wish it had more organizational settings, especially global. The "today" page is interesting, but i wish i could exclude some feeds that publish way more than others and just fill up the screen (sites like Ars Technica where i prefer to see their list of articles in rss rather than on their site). I expect LOTS more option to appear in the coming months, but right now, for a web based solution, Feedly is head and shoulders the best (imo). Their android app is really nice - takes a bit of getting the handle on, but after a few minutes, it seems like the absolute right way to do things (nevermind the great integration with Pocket). Cheers Feedly -- looking forward to an expected innovation run by you folks and hopefully a pay version.
Feedly seems to be doing the best out of the alternatives for performance in light of the deluge of Reader refugees (Newsblur, WTF?) -- but it is still very "sparse" in layout. I haven't figured out a way to get a simple listing of articles per feed like Reader does, which means it won't work for me.
I want something even more dense than Reader, or at least no worse. TheOldReader is close, but I would prefer something with iOS clients as well.
TT-RSS is looking like the best option (even though it has no apps), but I don't really want to have to host a PHP app.
Philosophically I love Feedly (YC company, startup, etc.), but I don't think they want to make some dense power user tool like a direct Reader replacement.
I mainly meant the iOS app, and the per-story view -- there is a lot of whitespace. The iOS app doesn't seem to actually accept the more condensed view as a global default, either, and only sometimes accepts it when I set it within a given rss feed.
I also dislike the Chrome extension (vs. pure web-only).
OTOH, it is really pretty, so I'm thinking of using it for recreational use anyway. It's just not an ideal research replacement for google reader yet.
A condensed list of titles... which opens to reveal a ridiculous waste of vertical space, including two rows for social media and, ironically, a massive title which can take up 2-3 lines.
Too bad Newsblur is pretty badly designed. I mean, there's a lot of bling, but it's completely confusing and sometimes ugly. Magic icons everywhere, wierd fonts -- two different dropdowns on each entry for god's sake. It looks like it was designed by someone who used their IDE as a template for the UI.
As an example of far too clever UI: Just try and change your password -- it's bizarre that it has no confirmation at all (I have no idea what my password is now). Not something I want to rely on, or deal with, or pay for.
Not that this isn't unexpected... web devs have always been very attached to their bling. That Feedly requires a plugin is... very odd. I don't expect it to last (either the plugin or feedly itself.. choose one), but maybe people are more credulous than I give them credit for.
Newsblur needs to simplify, simplify, simplify... but I suspect it's too late for that.
I'm switching to an rss to email digest script (modified rss2email). It's probably less bling than I want, but at least that minimizes the unnecessary crap, and works on mobile. It also has the benefit of limiting my tendency to refresh the feed lists every hour looking for procrastination sources. :-)
I'm working on a really, really minimal news reader (sign up for updates here: http://signup.viafeeds.com).
I like the idea of Newsblur and Feedly a lot, but I don't feel like either of them capture the simplicity that Google Reader used to have, before the unfortunate redesign.
I want to get back to that, and have a system that will seamlessly work across the web and mobile.
It'll be a couple months before it's ready for primetime, but I should be looking for beta users well in advance of that, and you sound like exactly the type of person who'd want to use this.
http://fred.rachelbythebay.com/ - is that sufficiently dense? I came up with it after realizing I didn't want any of the left, top, or bottom gunk in Reader. All I do is flip, flip, flip. Just keep pushing right (or sometimes, left, if you catch something neat and want to go back!)...
It's interesting, but I have ~200 feeds in 5 categories, and would like to be able to browse by:
1) see list of all feeds with unread counts (I don't see how to do that as a guest user)
2) click on a feed, see all articles in the feed (bold unread) (you sort of do this now, but indicating read v unread would be nice)
3) per-story, read in a dense but nicely-formatted way (Feedly does this great; yours is ok. Ideally be able to Instapaper too)
4) (optional) figure out which new articles in which feeds I care most about and "magic" those as well -- maybe using an interface like yours, or a "magazine" like feedly
I really have two modes of using RSS: reading as much as possible of those feeds, or wanting to be passively entertained. I'd potentially use two tools with a common backend.
I don't understand why someone doesn't do as close to a direct clone of Google Reader UI/UX as possible, and then clone Google Reader backend (e.g. the "Normandy" project).
I had this impression aswell. For all the attention that Newsblur is getting, I found the interface to be rather disappointing; their demo turned me away pretty quickly.
Feedly looks great, but yeah, won't use it in exchange of all my data. Perhaps if they come up with a standalone web version.
You can turn the button off in the preferences easily enough.
I think they ask for site permissions so they can extract RSS URLs out of the page via aforementioned injected button. Either way, Chrome extensions have visible source, so it's not too hard to vet it.
I don't have any method of paying online, well, there is, but it takes too much of effort doing the paperwork in bank that it's not even worth it. I don't live in first world country.
I'm not associated with feedly or their user but I'm guessing they need those permissions for getting the rss feed url from the web page and for detecting the current active tab. Probably to display an appropriate icon.
It does sound scary but it's really hard to do anything without those permissions.
Can anyone say that these extensions make a clear distinction between access and store? As long as they don't store any information about pages I have visited or text I have entered in a browser, I don't see much trouble.
This is the problem with the permission systems on most newer platforms. It's either all or nothing; Run or don't run. If i find a good app for android where only a minimal feature requires some privacy intruding permission i can't install it at all even though i never want to use that feature. Same on Windows, either it's admin or it's not, there is no middle ground. Most installers ask for full super mega admin permission just to get write permisson in %programfiles%, what if i don't even want to install it there.
I think .NET and Java programs can be run until they encounter permission requirements and then prompt but i have rarely seen this feature used.
Obviously it's a usability tradeoff and the programmers of the app would also have to handle the permission rejection gracefully while running but i don't think that's too much to ask for.
Not sure about .NET, but you have to prompt at load for Java. Your app can continue to run in a degraded manner if permissions are not granted however.
Anyway, this is why it's a shame Feedly doesn't offer a non-extension version. One would hope it's something they have planned. Offer the extension for those who want the additional features and are ok with the permissions, and the web app for the rest (and for the convenience of access anywhere, cross-platform).
Vote for it if you want to hammer the point in. The extension is probably for that irritating button that's on all pages until you disable it (preferences at the bottom of the folder list).
Until your favorite blogs realize that RSS is just a money sink and shut down their feeds, which is exactly what Google is subtly prophesying and no one seems to get.
I don't subscribe to feeds that don't syndicate full posts. The last few years, many feeds have switched to paid membership or putting separate ad posts in the stream, "This week RSS is brought to you by X". I'm fine with either of those solutions.
This might sound crazy to you, but many blogs are primarily about broadcasting information, rather than showing ads. From that perspective, having a feed is a no-brainer.
It's the best of a lot of worse options. Social media is a shouting match, and newsletters are either spam filtered or ignored. People don't want to ignore it, but email is just a bad way to follow a lot of things. RSS readers offer a nice, compact list of all the things you want to read.
I don't know what the click through rate is like on RSS feeds with a statistically useful subscriber count, but Google Reader says my feed has 11 subscribers, meaning those 3 people who came through on my last post are 27%. I don't get that kind of click through with hundreds of real people following my Twitter accounts, or thousands on G+. A million social media followers is meaningless if only 10,000 of them click your links, and any publisher with sense realizes that. Email is only slightly better: http://mailchimp.com/resources/research/email-marketing-benc...
Are you really just going to defame a company based on nothing but the granularity of Chrome's extension permissions? That's not just irresponsible but downright malicious.
Any extension that interacts with webpages needs that permission. Even if it's just to add a button. Before you go accusing them of selling information about your web browsing, you could at least check if they collect that information in the first place. Which is easy, since a network inspector is built-in to Chrome, and Chrome extensions are just ZIP files you can open up to read the code inside.
Hint: They don't. The plugin inserts a share image into the page, and the image is embedded in the plugin, not hosted on Feedly's server. It creates no network requests at all, so there's no involuntary information passing happening.
Those permission requests are because of an annoying floating "Share widget" that the Feedly extension adds (semi transparent widget near bottom right of every page you go to that you can click to share the page on FB and such).
Do you think all of the 500k were actual Google Reader users? It's possible a portion are jumping on the hivemind's bandwagon. Not discrediting the cause, just saying that some people like to join causes for the sake of joining causes.
But what cause do you join by signing up for Feedly? I understand that even people that did not use Google Reader may be upset that the company drops a service that is based on an open standard, but I can't see why such people would react by subscribing to some other RSS reader.
Maybe a great number of them are people like me who haven't actively used google reader in years but are willing to give rss readers another go after reading about them non stop for the last few days.
For background tabs, Reader doesn't require an extension. All links should be normal <a> tags, just middle-click (or right-click > new tab) and it opens behind Reader.
Congratulations on being well-positioned and ready to handle the onslaught when Google announced that they were axing Reader. You clearly were "where the puck will be" :)
Just when we were discussing the complete lack of online privacy, here's a free app that just happily added new servers and 10x bandwith to accommodate 500 000 more users.
Sweet. Nevermind how they can afford all that capacity. Maybe they're a charity, funded by Bill & Melinda?
I'm sure they will come out with a premium version or some such eventually. If you were Feedly would you really turn down the opportunity provided here just because you can't immediately monetize the new users?
I suppose it has been discussed and put to rest but..
I used the linux Liferea in 2006, and I still use it in 2013. I can hit update and read the new articles offline.. Privacy status: It runs on my computer.
If this many Reader users converted in so short of time, then it is amazing that Google could't find a way to monetize the service or at least keep it revenue-neutral, or even have it be a useful loss-leader
If it was anywhere near 50 million active users, Google Reader would not have been shut down. Even if it was 25 million actives it would still be kicking. Plain and simple. Subscribing to CNN seems like the behavior of beginner RSS readers who abandon the concept. Seems like a good idea, but a general, high volume feed with more noise than signal for the average person doesn't really make sense for Google Reader user. I'd be shocked if the number of those actively reading the CNN feed was anywhere above 5 million.
For comparison, CNN on Twitter only has 7.7 million followers. Do you honestly believe 3x more people are reading CNN's RSS feed than their Twitter feed?
Yep. RSS is a better way to read news. If I subscribe to an RSS feed then I get to pick through the whole thing at the point where I feel like reading it. Twitter just blasts past so fast it's gone in minutes, I miss maybe 90% of my Twitter stream (conservative estimate, it's probably more). I realise you can go and look at an individual Twitter feed but it takes several clicks to see the whole thing and it's not as fast as RSS.
It's a frontend for Google Reader right now. I think most are assuming the option will appear when they switch over to their own API after Reader goes dark.
In contrast to a lot of discontent about the Reader's demise, think about the opportunities it brings for this market? I've seen at least 10 alternatives popping up these last 2 days. Google leaving jump-started the competition in a seemingly stagnant field.
Surprisingly, Feedly seems like the best replacement at this point. But it's bizarre that Feedly requires plugin/extension for browsers and an app for iOS. Obviously the winning solution is a web site and iOS-optimized web pages.
I would love to see how Feedly is, but it's completely broken in Safari. It asks for approval via Google OAuth on every page load, and once it has approval it displays a login page, again.
There seem to be a number of issues surrounding this. Some people point to OAuth being the problem. Some people point to the Safari extension. One way or another, it's broken, and there's absolutely nothing on their Twitter, blog, Uservoice, or Get Satisfaction even indicates they're aware of the cloud of problems surrounding Safari usage.
Does Feedly for IOS have a feed limit? I have I think 160 feeds and it seems to cut me off at 90 I think. My feeds just aren't there. I dont find any settings that help with this either.
Is there any way of turning off the "Featured" content at the top? This is like Facebook pushing content that I never asked for. Here it's right at the top too.
Switch to a different view with the little gear icon at the top. I don't know about other views, but the Titles view doesn't have the featured articles thing. That said, Featured only shows posts from your own subscriptions within the folder, not from some shared collection or advertiser pushing.
Feedly is a good alternative, but not great. Those guys should prioritise a bit more functionality over designs (and remove all those CSS animations!!!)
If you rely on Google Reader for your daily workflow, figuring out which service or application is a suitable alternative after Reader closes is too late. Unless you're hoping for a 180 from Google, which there's no evidence to support right now, waiting just cuts the amount of time you can use to test the alternatives while still having access to Google Reader as a fallback.
On the other hand, waiting maximizes the amount of time I can continue to be productive while you more eager people test out the alternatives for me.
If I had more time, I'd definitely try a bunch of things. But for now I'm glad that there are a bunch of eager types out there testing the alternatives and posting here.
One good reason is that the RSS reader landscape is going to change drastically in the coming months as other developers jump to fill the hole left by Reader. The app you end up using may not even exist yet. Sure, the cost of switching is low, but it still seems like a waste of time to start searching now when so much will change in the next 3 months.
If you're sure the app you'll end up using hasn't been made public yet and the current alternatives are not going to do it for you, that's a risk you can take, definitely: but it's still a heck of a risk if Reader is integral to what you do online. At any rate, I don't think it's that hard to understand why thousands of people are already making contingency plans this far out.
Trying things out might teach you the sort of things you do and don't like in a reader. If all you've ever used is Google Reader then you might discover new preferences by being exposed to other solutions.
You still have to switch soon, so you might as well put in a little extra time. At least, that's my thinking on it right now.
I wouldn't wait until it closes, but I am more than happy to wait until others run around testing out these other services, and we see what comes out of that.
Why stick with dying app that will never see a new feature and which may make your data inaccessible at any time? I exported my data and will never see it again. Anything else and I might have tried to log in one day and suddenly hit the deadline. The odds of me ever entering hundreds of sites into any app of Google's again are also far lower now.
I am sticking with it because there is a rush on every other service. At the same time I am also looking. If you are on Firefox (I'm not as of yet) than the closest you can come to GR experience is installing the Brief add-on. However, your feeds would be on local storage though you'd be using a browser interface.
I see a lot of users just going to every service mentioned by that blog or that blogger. Without any research. As '@nsns' says it's the searching phase.
There are services that are famous as of now, very famous. Not because those are best out there(or even better than average) but because they played good on social scene the day Google read out Reader's death sentence. Feedly, having used them, is certainly not a great service. It's a client that is everywhere. It's a good one(must be) I personally never liked it.
But at least they are handling the load better than others. NewsBlur looks like a slow clunky web app. There are few others like FeedHQ.org and 1kpl.us but none of them are still there.
Looks like Feedly is just hoarding users with a promise to be sth that at least they are not going to be - the 'holy grail' of RSS sync service - which is the void GR actually created. A clean and fast web app/server where our feeds can reside in the cloud. And all the blog posts out there are talked about just one thing - these clients; and users listened.
NewsBlur was a kludge when it worked and let you add more than 12 feeds. And Feedly was prepared for Google announcing the Reader shutdown. NewsBlur could be a strong contender for the next exodus when Reader finally goes dark, but it has a long way to go.
The rest are a bit weird, mobile-only, or don't know what they're going to do when the Reader API they depend on shuts down.
Personally, I like Feedly's UX. It's like an evolution of Reader. It's much smoother, and has a magazine view for feeds where it makes sense.
It's the most similar to Google Reader (except perhaps for theoldreader), easiest import (no import at all yet, just sync) and best published transition plans.
