Ask HN: Are you tired of Google Reader?

3 points by drew_kutchar 15 years ago | 3 comments

Currently Google Reader is the main app that most use to read RSS, but it doesn't really handle reading other sources such as articles that you come across online. For those, there's Instapaper and Read it Later to name a few.

I was wondering is there room for innovation in reading apps. I think it's safe to say that people read a lot more (specially online) these days than ever before. In addition, I don't think the amount of reading is going to decrease in coming years.

Do you think there's a market for a better reader app or Google has already won the war? In addition, will you pay for a better reader app? If so, how much and what features you would like to see?

Thanks!

mahmud 15 years ago |

Google's Google Groups is also the most popular interface to USENet, do people ever bother to install a superior reader? People still use Hotmail and Yahoo mail even though POP3 and IMAP interfaces are freely available, and desktop clients offer better interfaces. How many people are making a living from chat clients? Torrent clients?

You will find that people hardly seek out superior ways to do the usual everyday things, unless prompted by a friend or mass public hysteria about a new possibility. News reading is not the sort of activity that encourages viral behavior; it's a solitary activity and the reading tool in-use can not compete with the ever changing content for attention (except in format and protocol changes, when the tool that supports the widest range of formats becomes popular.)

Your best hope, if you build it, is to be ready to launch something "blackhat" and subversive, if and when a major online paper goes paywall. But once you do that, you're entering unmonetizable territory.

drew_kutchar 15 years ago | |

Then how do you explain Evernote with this theory? They seem to be doing just fine.

I am not talking about creating a desktop app or a new protocol. I'm suggesting a better reader web app with more functionality than just displaying RSS feeds. Something that makes keeping up with the information overload more manageable, be it RSS feeds, email, articles, etc.

Thanks!

richardw 15 years ago |

I'd like to have more filtering in Reader. E.g. hide articles based on a regex. Have a collaborative filtering layer so once I've voted a few dozen articles from a feed it figures out what to hide.