Some choice quotes from the launch of Digg Reader:
> "Free products on the Internet don’t have a great track record. They tend to disappear, leaving users in a lurch. We need to build a product that people can rely on and trust will always be there for them." [0]
From a Wired slobbery puff piece:
> "The Digg team certainly has a shot at cracking that nut; their progress so far is astonishing, and their relentless enthusiasm makes you almost believe they can accomplish anything. But they also might melt the wax on their wings, come crashing down into the hard crust of the real world, and lose an astonishing amount of money. It almost doesn’t matter." [1]
From Gizmodo:
> "Where Google set us adrift, Digg threw us a life-preserver. While it's exciting to see what the future might hold, right now, it's nice enough just to have our heads above water." [2]
And the prize for winning HN comment from 2013 goes to @nothxbro:
> "It looks good, but I am wary of using any of these guys stuff based on how fast they 'pivot' and shut things down." [3]
We're working on V2 of Winds, a beautiful open source RSS Reader and Podcast app based on React/Redux and Stream. Release of V2 will be this April: https://github.com/getstream/winds
The downside to this is that it's hard. This kind of service requires a sprawling infrastructure with many dozens of servers and tens of thousands of dollars in costs per month. And the amount of programming work to take that code-base and make it just work, plug-and-play, on someone else's machine for individual use, or in a larger set-up for shared use, is pretty serious. Not to mention that the many individual services powering such a service are often reused and tangled up in other (critical) services run by a company, and it's not always possible to separate out the intellectual property.
This is only a sampling of the issues - open-sourcing huge projects is actually much trickier than you might think!
Releasing their source does not imply that they are providing a working turn-key product that another company or individual could just one click install and have Digg back. Put it out there so the next generation has the opportunity to learn from their experience as well as their mistakes.
That said, you are absolutely right. Software at scale is complicated and often difficult to deploy and maintain. I just feel that this is not a barrier for open-sourcing their product.
> Releasing their source does not imply that they are providing a working turn-key product that another company or individual could just one click install and have Digg back.
Except that exactly what most people will want and get mad if it's not easy to run. The backlash from that isn't worth it.
> I just feel that this is not a barrier for open-sourcing their product.
IP alone can be a bitch and that coupled with the fact that a number of companies have secrets (key/tokens/passwords/etc) in their code and cleaning those out (AND removing the git/svn history) is no small task. Lastly there are number of open source RSS readers out there, I seriously doubt Digg was doing anything particularly innovative in this space and I don't imagine many people care to build on something they made 5 years ago and probably didn't update much since then. Especially if it's not built with the "New hotness".
Typically it is a whole lot of work to open source a private service, because the code is intermingled with code for stuff that you either want to keep private, or would be impossible to get working outside of your environment.
This game designer only open-sourced his code for the player object. As I am not a seasoned game developer I have enjoyed going through this code and learning some of the techniques.
Maybe Digg can help bring up the next generation based on their techniques. Or maybe it helps foster a discussion around how not to implement something.
It seems that the fake news phenomenon could propel a company to derive worth to research what people are reading and matching it to their social media accounts.
I tried feedly shortly after Google Reader shut down but didn't like it much then. Don't know how it is nowadays. Inoreader is very close to the Google Reader experience without being a 1:1 clone.
I just tried it from seeing you mention it. I like how it more closely resembled what I was familar w/ re: Google Reader and Digg Reader. I think I've bought some more time with this one, thanks.
For some weird reason, after Google Reader shut down, I tried several RSS readers, including OldReader, the AOL one (I think) and Digg Reader.
As I used to visit Digg quite often (it's not the crowdsourcing site anymore, but an editorial-based one) because of its content, I stuck with it.
It started ok—what you would expect from a feed reader. It was clean, it updated quite often, it was good.
But three or so years ago, it started to look stale. No new features, and worse: the count read was wrong, and often it would mark your items as read. It was clunky and unreliable, late last year I moved to feedly and haven't look back.
The lesson here is that maybe there's no model for a free hosted RSS reader. Google found out, and then some others.
It's not ideal, but maybe it's OK inasmuch as I use a local RSS reader (feedbro) perfectly happily. It works, it's not beholden to another company, and its feature set will remain the same as long as I choose not to upgrade it.
I consider Digg Reader a perfect web app. It's simple, free, featureful and has a stark beauty to it
Like everyone else, I had to find a replacement for Google Reader, so I tried a lot of them (even paid ones). Digg Reader was the only one that exactly matched how I used Google Reader — and in fact, I like it even better now.
I'm going to swoop in and recommend (read: shameless plug) my own RSS reader, Zuperlist. It's trying to do things a little differently: it prioritizes topics the user cares about. More details are on the home page: https://www.zuperlist.com
Almost finished mobile version of site (you could check it in beta.bazqux.com -- landing page/menus are not ready yet, but the reading itself is more or less OK). Planning to add feeds management and reading statistics, themes, bookmarking, improved sharing, mailing lists support, many little things and to open source it.
Any suggestions for alternatives? I tried Inoreader, Feedly, Old reader - didn't like any of them! :(
Been using Digg for several years now and would like something similar to this!
Same here. Just gave quick tour for both of them and don't like them at all. TheOldReader UI with crazy spacing between elements drives me crazy. Feedly on other hand wastes too much space. Will not use none of them as replacement.
Devoted feedly user here. If you switch to 'Title only-view' and switch the display density to 'condensed' in the settings (Click user profile pic --> Settings --> Appearance), I think that should solve your annoyances. I too hate needless spacing between elements.
I was able to get Inoreader to visually look very similar to Digg reader. I do not want to use Feedly yet because the free version seems to too restricted. I'll try using Inoreader for few days before I make a decision.
never tried Digg, quite liked Feedly, and now i'm using something i built, aktu (http://aktu.io).
Yes it's a shameless plug :-) but i would really love to have some feedback if you have some time to spare. Thanks!
NewsBlur is nice. (I'm a very happy paid user.) It's social features are close to what was lost when Google shutdown their Reader. (The biggest thing lacking is how big the community was in GReader's heyday, but that was a rare lightning in a bottle and not NewsBlur's fault.)
As a paid customer I know that I'm a customer of NewsBlur, they expect to keep my business, and Samuel Clay has been very good over the years about listening to customer and community feedback.
Newsblur is indeed great. It is under active development, the developer is responsive to bug reports, the mobile apps are good (if not gorgeous), and there are some innovative features, such as the ability to train Newsblur to sort certain posts into a "focus" list.
Plus I consider the fact that it operates using a freemium model a great benefit as there are no ads, it is less likely to close shop out of the blue, and it is less likely to be selling user data to support itself.
Another +1 for Newsblur. I have been a paid user ever since Google Reader shut down. Its design goal was to fill just that gap, so for those who loved the workflow of Reader, Newsblur was the obvious choice. Of course, it has far exceeded Reader's feature set since then. It has had some performance issues in the past, but the developer was quick to respond to them.
+1 vote for Newsblur. I was using Google Reader start to finish and also tried several others before settling on Newsblur. It's perfect in almost every way, but has a curious/arbitrary number of stories preserved per feed, sometimes 200, sometimes 500. I haven't figured out if it's an option, or an algorithm.
I’ve been using Inoreader for the past months, switching from NetNewsWire. It’s a web app, so now I have access outside of my Mac as well
Best part is that you can create a random email address to sign up to e.g., email notifications from organizations that don’t have RSS. This requires their 50 USD plan, but I’m just glad to support them!
I'm very happy with Blogtrottr, which turns feeds into email. It has flexible delivery options, e.g. digests, plain text vs. HTML, and sort order. Best of all, receiving posts via email means I don't have to check yet another app.
I've been using Feedly since Google Reader died. Curious if there are any other good ones - I miss GReader's ability to have subcategories for example, and am curious if there's a service that supports this
I'm assuming you mean podcasting apps. I would also use one if it exists. There's no way I'm switching from Newsblur, but curious: does Feedly store your last listened position, so you can switch from phone to desktop like you can with Audible?
Feedly is nice on desktop web site and mobile app, though it is missing some of the social features of Google Reader and some functionality can be more difficult to find in the UI than it should be.
After trying a few of the others after Google Reader shut down, I settled on https://tt-rss.org/. It has an official Android client and quite a few iOS clients as well.
This is why I'm very happy to pay Feedly money.
They keep track of my RSS feeds and give a nice API so I can use my app of choice to read them (or the web interface). And because I pay them, it's in their interests not to fuck it up by trying to be too clever.
Digg changed the design (to digg v4) and interface and alienated it's userbase (august 2010). After years of other poor decisions this broke the camels back.
Digg was then flooded with links to reddit.
Reddit was there and caught all the users that all looked for a new home to "migrate" to. After a month 30% digg users or so moved to reddit and the rest is history.
Let's see what happens when reddit tries to do a redesign ;)
Reddit has actually been slowly lurching towards revealing a redesign for the last couple of months. To be honest they seem almost too paranoid about not messing things up to the point where it feels like progress has been at a standstill for years. They’re doing a lot of previews [1], and getting a lot of feedback from users, but I still feel that the sort of power users who engage with a process like this might end up helping them design a Homer that blindsides a lot of people.
There needs to be an acceptable alternative for everyone to migrate to. The general public won't move to the likes of voat or imzy (which apparently already shut down).
I have my own ttRSS too, and for a small netbook I have I use newsbeuter[1]. I specially like it because it syncs with ttRSS, so all the feeds and read statuses are kept centralized.
never used digg reader, switched from google reader to feedly and now i've switched from feedly to my own news aggregator / rss reader: aktu (http://aktu.io).
It's currently a beta version, and i'd love to have some feedback :-)
Some choice quotes from the launch of Digg Reader:
> "Free products on the Internet don’t have a great track record. They tend to disappear, leaving users in a lurch. We need to build a product that people can rely on and trust will always be there for them." [0]
From a Wired slobbery puff piece:
> "The Digg team certainly has a shot at cracking that nut; their progress so far is astonishing, and their relentless enthusiasm makes you almost believe they can accomplish anything. But they also might melt the wax on their wings, come crashing down into the hard crust of the real world, and lose an astonishing amount of money. It almost doesn’t matter." [1]
From Gizmodo:
> "Where Google set us adrift, Digg threw us a life-preserver. While it's exciting to see what the future might hold, right now, it's nice enough just to have our heads above water." [2]
And the prize for winning HN comment from 2013 goes to @nothxbro:
> "It looks good, but I am wary of using any of these guys stuff based on how fast they 'pivot' and shut things down." [3]
0: http://blog.digg.com/post/49264812779/were-still-learning
1: https://www.wired.com/2013/06/inside_digg_reader/
2: https://gizmodo.com/digg-reader-hands-on-your-google-reader-...
3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5894290