Isn't that kind of a contradictory statement? RSS is far from dead as far as I'm concerned. I agree that the RSS reader space is very crowded, but Reeder was a late entry, and it is, by far, my favorite RSS reader.
RSS is still alive and kicking. Seems like no service has been able to make it gain as much traction as it should.
The recent Google+ integration into Google Reader made the product take a step backwards. Then you have apps like Reeder (which was my favorite at some time), Pulse (became my next favorite), and then Flipboard (which has won me personally).
Except, I feel like something is missing from all of them.
Google Reader has this awesome Sort by Magic feature, but seems to have been broken recently. If applications could use this sorting method and bring in social better (the integration is lacking right now) it would be awesome!
1. On Chrome in Windows, the smaller fonts look a bit scrunched in a way that makes my eyeballs hurt. Is this configurable?
2. I notice that you say to bookmark the URL, and I presume my user id is stored in a cookie. What happens if I want to read from another device or if I clear my cookies? It would be awesome if you could generate a unique URL for each user. Bonus points if it's easy to say over the phone or type in by hand/from memory (I use at 4-5 devices to browse the web daily - 2 x laptops, Playbook, and my BB).
3. That Tweet sidebar thing is interesting but feels a little laggy. Is there a way to turn it off?
I typed cnn.com, nothing happened. I then typed www.cnn.com and I see that it recognized. I then clicked the dog icon, it is still thinking....
I like the interface and the fact that you don't need to sign up. Not sure if I'll remember to come back to this because it really isn't working for me right now.
I believe it stands for 'minimum viable product'[1]. Basically releasing a rough v1.0 that does the bare minimum, and then turning it into the real deal in the next major iteration.
You can import using OPML. I also would like an easier integration method, that and also explaining what OPML is. It took me awhile to figure and I have good knowledge of GR, imagine someone that doesn't.
/thanks, found it! Cannot believe I did not see it there earlier.
Though I do not expect it to work after importing… …I have A LOT of feeds -- I see the subscription titles showing but it seems to be stuck on "refresh" right now…
It's a pretty app that looks like it's taken a lot of design inspiration from Google Reader. Which is a good thing, I think they nailed it in terms of UI.
That said, I was really hoping you'd have your own sharing mechanism. The major thing Google Reader lost in the transition was the ability to share and comment in a unified manner - having to go to Twitter or Facebook to read comments on something you shared elsewhere is a pain.
Also, doesn't look like there's any tracking of read/unread items.
Google reader user. Agreed: If someone could restore the features google reader killed, I would start using their product immediately.
Specifically:
sharing, comments, bookmarklet for non-rss content.
Float (float.com) has an interesting idea of removing everything except content from facebook/twitter/etc, which I like, but they are still missing a usable webapp and the aforementioned features.
Too much whitespace in the list view, if I'm using RSS I want to scroll through hundreds of articles in rapid succession and cherry-pick the interesting ones.
Would be nice to be able to import my Google Reader subscription list so I can instantly compare the two tools.
The Tweets and shared comments is an interesting idea, but took me a while to find - this is the one thing that would get me to come back and use this over Google Reader. Nice differentiator.
about the science/film problem you're talking about:
I had the same impression. What's happening is that your feed is showing science and film articles, but because there was only recent science articles, you had the impression that your feed did not include film articles
You know what I really like my RSS reader to do? Zoom in and out on command. Show me birds eye view (readable view) of everything, let me scroll fast, but then let me zoom in to the headlines which I may find interesting and then let me zoom in more for details without making me click to visit the site. By zoom-in and zoom-out I mean the way Prezi does it, i.e, the camera zoom in/out and not the Ctrl+ font increase of browser.
I really like what you guys have done here. Ever since Google Reader switched over to the Google+ design, I've been looking for a replacement.
This is a great MVP, but for me, there is one feature I would NEED before I would consider switching.
Google Reader shows you a count of how many posts are unread, and as you read them, it removes it from the list. That feature is the most important for me. Any plans on addressing this? Or do you already have this and I'm just not seeing it?
Love the subscription packs and the friction free signup, but once I'd picked a pack, I wanted to go back and add another pack to my set of subscriptions... but couldn't figure out how, probably because this is an MVP.
When looking at my subscriptions I clicked on the pub in the upper left to go to your homepage (to add a pack to my subscriptions) and what it does is change the view in some way that's totally not obvious to me. I get a different top story. Maybe its changing the sort order, but theres' no visual indication of what has changed, only the story I was reading is replaced. I click it again and it switches back.
Great MVP, and bonus points for the effortless signup.
Had the same experience but if you click on the original link from HN again you can add other packs. Probably just needs a link back to that landing page.
Looks really nice, but I'd like to know more about its unique value proposition (what makes me use it instead of Google Reader, where I have all my stars and shares, and great search).
It looks really great and it has some quite comprehensive features. Which actually sends me back to what one of LinkedIn's founder once said[1]: If You're Not Embarrassed By The First Version Of Your Product, You’ve Launched Too Late
If this is the first MVP of the idea, it might be worthwhile checking out Ash Maurya's great post[2] on the subject.
If You're Not Embarrassed By The First Version Of Your Product, You’ve Launched Too Late
Sort of OT, but I'm not sure this is really broadly useful advice. In the world of iOS apps, for instance, that first impression is often the only one you'll get before people move on. Hard to say which is the correct approach for an app like this but sometimes it pays to polish the hell out of 1.0 instead.
Apple does make iterating your MVP harder. Not impossible, just harder.
But don't forget that MVP is primarily a tool for learning with the least amount of effort. Not less. So, if you are making something nobody wants, why make it very polished? You will just waste more time learning this fact. Time that could be used changing the product/trying something new entirely.
And even on app store: you can iterate with different product names, and different brands. So you can lunch different iterations, possibly A/B testing app name, logo and description, without much extra overhead, all at the same time.
I think it has a lot less to do with release delays in the App store than it does with the attention span of the typical customer. You can iterate all you want but if they've already formed an opinion of your product based on a first impression they're unlikely to give it a second look. All the apps I've released have had a big initial sales spike over the first week or so and never again climbed back anywhere close to those numbers, despite a large number of functional and aesthetic improvements.
You can release multiple products with different names and even different brands (you use different accounts if needed). It may not be cheap, but it is possible. This way you will have the huge spike over and over again (you may change name/logo for different experiments). And please don't use vanity metrics[1] for measuring the outcome.
RSS isn't ever going to be a big deal. If you are thinking in terms of market size it's never going to be really big. Facebook, and Google+ have both taken the subscription model in a direction that is more consumer friendly.
If you accept that premise, you are building a product for informed, longish-term computer users, and you are treating them like they are beginners. If my intrest was piqued by RSS I probably already use an RSS reader, and have a bunch of feeds I want to use.
You are missing the ability for me to organize my feeds into folders. I have a lot of feeds, and I need folders to triage my reading into a sliding scale from important to least important.
After all of this keep it up, because I am, and I think many others are, willing to pay for an app that does RSS reading well.
Fair point. But if this supported adding and managing feeds of my choice I would certainly give it a try. I'm guessing that this is a test of their reader and hence an MVP.
P.S I currently use Google Reader and am looking for alternatives.
I agree, but it's still missing folders. Oh, and this is something I forgot in my first point, where is the ecosystem. It's a nice new RSS reader, but it's web only. I use a couple different clients in connection with Google Reader. These guys are starting with nothing.
Also open-source (http://github.com/samuelclay), actively developed, and social features coming soon (within the next 2 months). And of course, a history of shipping.
I'm definitely interested in switching RSS readers. I'm not a fan of the recent changes to Google reader, so a solid alternative would definitely be welcome. Like you, I'd be willing to pay to get a product that handled RSS really well.
That's a great argument by itself, but it's also a great argument for the point I was trying to argue in my head: consider making this a paid service. It doesn't take that many users to get a great business running, and a lot of the users will probably be RSS power users, so they will greatly respect the removed cruft and great design.
Google Reader is an atrocious experience, albeit one that probably has a couple of useful apps, and Bloglines is a joke. Fever requires you to roll your own with all the hassle and risk it entails, but a paid, hosted service sounds like a great way to go about it in the way that pinboard.in did compared to del.icio.us.
Just think about it, and if you continue with a free model, you can always consider pivoting, if you find that the current model isn't sustainable. Of course, that means that this is a full-time endeavour, which may or may not fit into your lives.
The current state of the project reminds me of Instapaper in its infancy. It will be interesting to follow you.
1. It doesn't seem to remember whether I have seen something before. I have over a hundred items per day in my feeds and I read them erratically, so I don't want to have to remember myself.
2. It would be nice to have a more integrated sharing feature. An ideal method for my group of computational science friends (since migrating off Google Reader and being dissatisfied with long threads on G+) would be linking into a (possibly private) reddit. It would be nice to at least see if the item has been shared yet.
Hi everyone. We've been away from our computers for a few hours but wow, thanks for the feedback (good and bad). We're going to go through all of your comments (and those that have been submitted by email and Twitter) and prioritize our efforts.
We know there are still lots of things that need improving (handling lots of feeds, how new items are displayed, organizing feeds, etc) - we'll do our best to get to these asap, but wanted to get this 'out the door' as quickly as possible to get your feedback.
71 comments
[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 143 ms ] threadThe recent Google+ integration into Google Reader made the product take a step backwards. Then you have apps like Reeder (which was my favorite at some time), Pulse (became my next favorite), and then Flipboard (which has won me personally).
Except, I feel like something is missing from all of them.
Google Reader has this awesome Sort by Magic feature, but seems to have been broken recently. If applications could use this sorting method and bring in social better (the integration is lacking right now) it would be awesome!
1. On Chrome in Windows, the smaller fonts look a bit scrunched in a way that makes my eyeballs hurt. Is this configurable?
2. I notice that you say to bookmark the URL, and I presume my user id is stored in a cookie. What happens if I want to read from another device or if I clear my cookies? It would be awesome if you could generate a unique URL for each user. Bonus points if it's easy to say over the phone or type in by hand/from memory (I use at 4-5 devices to browse the web daily - 2 x laptops, Playbook, and my BB).
3. That Tweet sidebar thing is interesting but feels a little laggy. Is there a way to turn it off?
I like the interface and the fact that you don't need to sign up. Not sure if I'll remember to come back to this because it really isn't working for me right now.
How does your RSS reader beat the competition? Anything of note?
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product
BTW I thought there will be easy way to import Google reader list but there is none. (I first selected interesting then blank.)
2. OPML import? Already have a set of RSS subscriptions, need to be able to import existing feed list, don't wish to reenter all these in…
/goodluck on the venture.
What is broken though is they don't seem to support folders.
Though I do not expect it to work after importing… …I have A LOT of feeds -- I see the subscription titles showing but it seems to be stuck on "refresh" right now…
That said, I was really hoping you'd have your own sharing mechanism. The major thing Google Reader lost in the transition was the ability to share and comment in a unified manner - having to go to Twitter or Facebook to read comments on something you shared elsewhere is a pain.
Also, doesn't look like there's any tracking of read/unread items.
Specifically:
sharing, comments, bookmarklet for non-rss content.
Float (float.com) has an interesting idea of removing everything except content from facebook/twitter/etc, which I like, but they are still missing a usable webapp and the aforementioned features.
Would be nice to be able to import my Google Reader subscription list so I can instantly compare the two tools.
The Tweets and shared comments is an interesting idea, but took me a while to find - this is the one thing that would get me to come back and use this over Google Reader. Nice differentiator.
The design is nice.
Don't show the entire story when you visit one of the categories. Just show headlines.
It rendered terribly slowly, scrolling was jerky, and page navigation was completely unresponsive. Eventually the browser just crashed.
The first category I visited was Science. It showed science stuff.
The next category I visited was Film. It also showed science stuff.
This is a great MVP, but for me, there is one feature I would NEED before I would consider switching.
Google Reader shows you a count of how many posts are unread, and as you read them, it removes it from the list. That feature is the most important for me. Any plans on addressing this? Or do you already have this and I'm just not seeing it?
When looking at my subscriptions I clicked on the pub in the upper left to go to your homepage (to add a pack to my subscriptions) and what it does is change the view in some way that's totally not obvious to me. I get a different top story. Maybe its changing the sort order, but theres' no visual indication of what has changed, only the story I was reading is replaced. I click it again and it switches back.
Great MVP, and bonus points for the effortless signup.
It looks really great and it has some quite comprehensive features. Which actually sends me back to what one of LinkedIn's founder once said[1]: If You're Not Embarrassed By The First Version Of Your Product, You’ve Launched Too Late
If this is the first MVP of the idea, it might be worthwhile checking out Ash Maurya's great post[2] on the subject.
[1] http://articles.businessinsider.com/2009-11-13/strategy/3006...
[2] http://www.ashmaurya.com/2009/11/from-minimum-viable-product...
Sort of OT, but I'm not sure this is really broadly useful advice. In the world of iOS apps, for instance, that first impression is often the only one you'll get before people move on. Hard to say which is the correct approach for an app like this but sometimes it pays to polish the hell out of 1.0 instead.
But don't forget that MVP is primarily a tool for learning with the least amount of effort. Not less. So, if you are making something nobody wants, why make it very polished? You will just waste more time learning this fact. Time that could be used changing the product/trying something new entirely.
And even on app store: you can iterate with different product names, and different brands. So you can lunch different iterations, possibly A/B testing app name, logo and description, without much extra overhead, all at the same time.
[1] http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/30/vanity-metrics/
If you accept that premise, you are building a product for informed, longish-term computer users, and you are treating them like they are beginners. If my intrest was piqued by RSS I probably already use an RSS reader, and have a bunch of feeds I want to use.
You are missing the ability for me to organize my feeds into folders. I have a lot of feeds, and I need folders to triage my reading into a sliding scale from important to least important.
After all of this keep it up, because I am, and I think many others are, willing to pay for an app that does RSS reading well.
P.S I currently use Google Reader and am looking for alternatives.
As discussed on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1834305
It has folders, hotkeys, and I think I like the layout more than Google Reader (I'm still in the early stages of switching over).
Google Reader is an atrocious experience, albeit one that probably has a couple of useful apps, and Bloglines is a joke. Fever requires you to roll your own with all the hassle and risk it entails, but a paid, hosted service sounds like a great way to go about it in the way that pinboard.in did compared to del.icio.us.
Just think about it, and if you continue with a free model, you can always consider pivoting, if you find that the current model isn't sustainable. Of course, that means that this is a full-time endeavour, which may or may not fit into your lives.
The current state of the project reminds me of Instapaper in its infancy. It will be interesting to follow you.
2. It would be nice to have a more integrated sharing feature. An ideal method for my group of computational science friends (since migrating off Google Reader and being dissatisfied with long threads on G+) would be linking into a (possibly private) reddit. It would be nice to at least see if the item has been shared yet.
We know there are still lots of things that need improving (handling lots of feeds, how new items are displayed, organizing feeds, etc) - we'll do our best to get to these asap, but wanted to get this 'out the door' as quickly as possible to get your feedback.