
Google Reader announced its shutdown exactly a year ago - thristian
http://blog.newsblur.com/post/79491002325/google-reader-announced-its-shutdown-exactly-a-year-ago
======
GvS
Immediately after reading this post I thought: "Damn, I use them for half a
year and I'm really happy, I should support them" and went to website to
upgrade to premium and... I couldn't find it! It was hidden as 4th option from
top menu under small settings cogwheel on bottom. Instead of all those useless
(for me) statistics on front page you should put a small note like "Like us?
Go premium!" to remind us that making something great needs support.

~~~
KJasper
The entire frontpage should be A/B-tested with some conversion experts. There
is a lot of room for improvement if you look at the CTA's, buttons, comparison
between free and premium, etc.

~~~
graeme
I agree. If I stumbled on the Newsblur landing page, I wouldn't have even
recognized it as a replacement for Google Reader.

For instance, my eyes end on "Training". I now get that the software can be
trained, but at first you wonder if Newsblur offers training.

I also expect the pricing is too low. RSS is no longer mass market, but the
people who use it tend to use it professionally. I will pay a LOT for
something business critical that works well.

As an aside, anything that is a business expense can be 50% higher, assuming a
33% average tax rate. You must earn $150 to buy a $100 consumer good, but only
$100 to buy a $100 business item.

------
conesus
Hey HN, NewsBlur's founder here. Just wanted to clear up a misconception about
revenue.

1\. The revenue (income/expenses) graph shows 16 months, not 12. Cut it off at
March 2013 and you'll see a much healthier picture of NewsBlur's revenue.

2\. Expenses are where they are because I let them get there. Notice that it's
over 2/3rds payroll and subcontractors. That means it's all being invested
back into NewsBlur. If I had to, I could easily cut down expenses, but then I
wouldn't be building a better reader. I'm paying myself and my few
subcontractors a healthy salary, which means we are sustainable at this rate.

And even with expenses where they are, as I've seen somebody do the math,
revenue (which is recurring and will spike this month) far outpaces expenses.
I don't show the dollar figures here, but there's enough in profit to hire a
full-time engineer, which is something I plan to do with that secret project I
alluded to at the end.

~~~
gleb
I'd month-normalize this chart. Otherwise it looks to support the opposite
conclusion of what you are trying to say.

------
VikingCoder
> all the air sucked out by Google

I don't think that's fair.

Google Reader was Blockbuster Video. It lacked the personality of all of the
RSS Aggregators (aka mom'n'pop rental stores), but it looked nice, it had most
of what you were looking for, and the price was fair (lol). But it was a
giant, faceless and unchanging monolith.

Well, the brick and mortar rental DVD market is dead. And so is the cloud RSS
aggregator market. Is it Blockbuster's fault that DVD rental died? No. It got
replaced by better things. Netflix, Amazon Instant, Hulu+...

Cloud RSS Aggregation sure felt nice, but as a business, I'm not convinced it
was at all sustainable. Being an inherently read-only medium, where you have
to maintain a huge library of content to be useful, is shaky ground to me.

We like the technical idea of RSS, but we all read Facebook, Reddit, and HN.
Why is that?

~~~
wpietri
I think it's entirely fair. They came into a thriving market and killed it
with a subsidized product pushed by an enormous brand. And then they did
nothing with it.

I read Facebook and HN, but I subscribe to Newsblur because there are other
good ways to get news. To me, Newsblur is the text equivalent of my podcast
app: My tool for paying attention to particular sources and making sure I
don't miss anything. Podcasts are also an inherently read-only medium, and
just like newsreaders, people making podcasting apps don't really have to
maintain a huge library of anything; it's the podcasters who do that.

~~~
VikingCoder
If I understand you correctly, big-brand companies shouldn't introduce new
products in thriving markets.

Or if they do, they shouldn't get to subsidize them.

Or if they do, they have to switch to profitable or exit the market really
quickly, so as to not screw up the market.

Or if they aren't profitable, they have to just keep adding features and hope
to one day get profitable.

I honestly don't get what people think Google should do. I mean, people are
PISSED at Google over Google Reader shutting down. WHY? Companies fail with
their products, all the time.

~~~
wpietri
If you keep taking a single point and drawing a line through it, you'll
regularly fail to understand people.

I think Google Reader should have either a) taken their product seriously, or
b) shut it down as soon as they decided it wasn't a priority.

Put another way, Google should have recognized much earlier that their giant
presence means that they can accidentally ruin markets and done the
responsible thing. The more power you have, the more responsibility you have.

~~~
VikingCoder
If you don't understand the consequences of your argument, people will
regularly complain that your argument makes no sense.

They spent large amounts of money preparing and operating Google Reader. There
is no other way they could possibly prove to you that they took it more
seriously, short of throwing MORE good money after bad.

They watched the growth curves, they added features (reader.google.com/play
for one), they integrated with other products (Buzz), they waited for new
products to be released and integrated with them as well (Google+).

At some point, they decided to leave the market.

Or they should have shut it down sooner? Before they added those features,
before they integrated with other products, before the other products were
released and before they integrated with them?

Taking it seriously = more time, more money.

Shutting down sooner = less time, less money.

It's apparently OBVIOUS to you exactly how much money they should have spent
on it, how they should have prioritized their new features and integrations,
and the precise date at which they should have shut down.

And it's so obvious to other people, that they get ultra pissed about it, and
abandon all other Google products out of spite.

I wish I had your crystal ball.

~~~
wpietri
Do you find that being a dick generally makes you more persuasive? Because it
isn't working for me here.

Google Reader was well known within Google as an orphan project for a long
time. Years before they shut it I was chatting with some Googler and Reader
game up. He mentioned how impressive it was that it was still alive given how
starved for resources it had been. I think he said that it was just one guy.
And here's Reader's creator in 2011 acknowledging it was understaffed:
[http://massless.org/?p=174](http://massless.org/?p=174)

So yes, they should have shut it down way sooner rather than starving it. That
was irresponsible both internally (because it's a management failure) and
externally (because they were harming a market that they weren't serious
about).

~~~
VikingCoder
I'm sorry I thought you started it, when you claimed that I was too stupid to
understand you.

> He mentioned how impressive it was that it was still alive given how starved
> for resources it had been.

Everyone's pet-project is understaffed. That's how passionate people will
always describe their favorite projects.

If you divide man-hours by revenue, you'll note that Google Reader was getting
pretty close to infinite resources.

> rather than starving it.

Most, if not all, RSS aggregators don't DREAM of having the software tooling,
crawling and storage resources, DevOps, and visibility that Google Reader had.

I say again, I wish I had your crystal ball for the correct amount of
resources, and the correct amount of time to spend on a project.

It's pretty easy to armchair quarterback, though.

------
Maakuth
I don't quite get what is he trying to communicate here. The graph shows that
there was some profit during the last summer but since then the income has
failed to pay for the expenses. The text reads partially like a post-mortem of
a failed project, partially like that of a success. Is he happy or not?

For the record, I'm a happy NewsBlur subscriber and will definitely renew my
subscription.

~~~
gnah
They'll hit another spike when users from the google reader shutdown renew
their yearly subscriptions.

~~~
kokey
I think a bit of buzz around renewal time is good. The best new signups come
from referrals, and the best time for referrals is shortly after a customer
has made the decision to pay for the service.

------
jasonkester
Since NewsBlur's pricing model seems to built on annual recurring payments, It
would seem that the interesting part of that graph is hidden just off to the
right.

How many of those panicked conversions are going to stick with the service,
now that all the excitement has died down and they've had a whole year to
really make up their mind as to whether a newsreader is something they need to
be paying for.

Here's hoping the answer is yes. Looking forward to a followup in a few months
time!

~~~
d23
Speaking only for myself, I know they lost me as a customer primarily because
the system was buggy at the time they launched and promoted themselves on HN.
I know there wasn't much time to respond to Reader's shutdown, but it just
reminded me that when you get that first burst of traffic, you better be sure
you can retain the folks you get.

~~~
conesus
No kidding it was buggy. But a year of work has moved NewsBlur far ahead. It's
quite stable now. And it's the fastest reader on the market. That's why I
graph average load times on the dashboard. The re-design also didn't launch
until May, so your first impression last year will be quite different than
this year.

~~~
batmansbelt
Is it better than feedspot?

------
manish_gill
I've been really, really happy with Inoreader (It's free). They just revamped
their UI too! Link: [http://beta.inoreader.com/](http://beta.inoreader.com/)

~~~
publicfig
Their page shows no examples of the app itself, and no demos. Everything seems
to be hidden behind a registration. That's incredibly unfortunate.

------
ents
As someone who joined news blur after the reader shutdown, I hate to say it,
but this seemed inevitable. The design was incredibly confusing (not to
mention hideous) and there were so many options nested in so many menus that
any time I needed to change something I could never find the option. I
switched to feedbin since it had some semblance of design, was easy to
understand and synced with many more apps.

Also, I was credited three free years for being an early adopter and I suspect
many others were as well, so I really doubt a big revenue bump anytime soon.

~~~
stephen_mcd
Check out [https://kouio.com](https://kouio.com) if you're looking for
something visually clean and simple.

~~~
mrec
Yeah, I'm really enjoying Kouio. Even the very Mac-style UI has stopped
bothering me. Still a few missing features around the feeds list sidebar, but
nothing critical.

I really wish they'd start charging for it.

------
cstuder
I wish them good luck, but I'm happy to have gone with Fever and hosting my
reader on my own.

I am more and more glad that self-hosting alternatives for applications I use
exist. For me, the compromise between the technical challenge to install your
own app vs. paying to have it installed shifts towards self-hosting almost
every day.

~~~
shrikant
NewsBlur is open source and you can set up a self-hosted version of it as
well. See
[https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur](https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur)

~~~
egeozcan
It's a bit of a hassle to set it up correctly though (I'm not complaining or
anything. It just is, compared to other hosted options. I love the fact that
it's open source)

~~~
mikevm
Is it possible to use the iOS/Android NewsBlur apps with a custom set up
server?

~~~
egeozcan
I don't use them, so I'm not sure. They are open source [1] so in the worst
case, you could still make them work with a bit fiddling I guess.

[1]:
[https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur/tree/master/clients/](https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur/tree/master/clients/)

------
Kiro
> Why spend all that money on subcontractors and new tools? Because I’m
> investing in building an even better news reader.

Do people want a "better" news reader? I feel this would be profitable if you
stopped wasting so much money.

~~~
mistermann
Not to mention, are there that many people that even write blogs anymore, or
is there maybe another more modern use for news readers that I'm not aware of?

~~~
joshuacc
There are thousands upon thousands of people who write blogs on wordpress.com,
Blogger, and even older sites like LiveJournal and Xanga. Not to mention all
the technically inclined folks who run their own with self-hosted WordPress,
Jekyll, and friends.

The number of blog producers doesn't even need to be that large (relatively
speaking) in order for a newsreader to be beneficial to blog consumers. Say
that there were 10,000 blogs in the world. If you were interested in more than
ten or so, it would be a hassle to visit each one on a regular basis to check
for updates.

And yes, RSS is used beyond just blogs. Mainstream news sites often publish
RSS feeds of their categories. News aggregator sites like HN tend to have RSS
feeds as well.

------
pgt
My initial reaction upon seeing the chart was that NewsBlur would be shutting
down because of dropping income, but the chart period is only up until the
Google Reader announcement to shut down. NewsBlur seems to be doing well, and
that's great!

~~~
petercoolz
This confused me, but I think it's because annual subscription revenue was
recognized in the month of the payment.

~~~
julian55
Exactly. If people renew there should be another peak about now. I have been
happy with Newsblur so I have just renewed my subscription.

------
andyjohnson0
As a satisfied newsblur user, I'm hoping that there will be another peak in
April when all the people who joined last year renew their yearly
subscriptions. Otherwise this doesn't look sustainable to me.

------
donniezazen
I have stopped consuming news through RSS readers because no one organize can
produce quality work on a consistent basis. With limited amount of time I need
a system that would tell me newsworthiness of an item. I have come to a
conclusion that crowdsourced news is the best form of news reading. I have
been slowly trying to read all my news on Google+, HN, and Reddit.

~~~
wpietri
What this misses for me is solid pieces that aren't hugely popular.

There are a number of sources that I don't want to miss. This includes things
that friends write. But the ones I really treasure are the people who are
interesting alternative voices, the ones who in 5 years time might turn out to
have been 5 years ahead of everybody else.

If you read what everybody else is reading, you'll only know what everybody
else knows.

~~~
donniezazen
I tend to fall into I-have-to-follow-everything-category stealing time that I
could spend creating stuff that other folks might have not imagined.

~~~
wpietri
Yeah, that's a risk. It's not a big problem for me now, but then my must-read
category is pretty small.

------
thristian
I should mention I'm one of the happy NewsBlur users who jumped ship from
Google Reader, and I'm definitely going to renew my subscription.

------
easyfrag
My favourite aggregator Feedbin had its 1st birthday a few days ago.
[http://blog.feedbin.com/2014/03/11/feedbins-first-
year/](http://blog.feedbin.com/2014/03/11/feedbins-first-year/)

------
rootuid
I don't get it? what windfall is he speaking of and he never addressed why he
will continue even though it's loss making.

~~~
josephlord
Well if those were annual payments it might be profitable spread over the
whole year (my visual integration skills can't quite tell) and there should be
another massive spike just about to start as all those people renew their
subscriptions.

~~~
joshuacc
My subscription to Newsblur just auto-renewed. :-)

------
joosters
_and in a world of casual readers who don’t care where their news is coming
from so long as it’s in their interests and matches their biases, NewsBlur is
the coffee equivalent of the AeroPress._

What rot. Using an RSS reader doesn't magically free you from your own biased
news sources. If anything, it insulates you more into your own bubble.

~~~
wpietri
He's not saying RSS readers magically free you from your own biases news
sources. What he's pointing at is people's indifference to source as long as
it's comfortable. That's in contrast to a newsreader, where you hand-select
your sources.

I think the group he's talking about includes people who get all their news
from one comfortable source and those who get all their news socially, which
is also generally comfortable.

Hand-selecting sources for a feed reader doesn't guarantee that you'll end up
with stuff that doesn't match your biases. In my case, though, I specifically
include sources that are solid ones but that don't match my biases. So an RSS
reader at least makes that possible.

------
kasbah
I just have to tag on this post and mention the replacement that I stuck with:
[http://goread.io](http://goread.io)

It's open-source with a free hosted service. It works really well for me. I
have been very impressed with the progress since inception and am subscribed
to a monthly donation.

~~~
mjibson
I'm going to write a similar year-in-review story for goread.io.

------
pbreit
With Reader's departure my Google use has dropped 50-90%. I don't think it was
the best move.

------
jamespo
One thing I really miss since google reader shutdown is a cross-platform
(including Windows & Linux) native reader with ability to sync. I used to use
RSSOwl. If any of the premium RSS services could support this I'd subscribe in
a heartbeat.

~~~
rplnt
What do you expect from a native desktop app as opposed to web app? I think
most of it could be done via extension(s) over existing web reader.
Notifications, offline mode, what else is there?

~~~
hengheng
Responsiveness. Newsblur takes about five seconds to respond sometimes, and
can't buffer any feeds for offline use.

------
TeeWEE
I'm very interested to see the absolute expenses and income. Since server
hosting is very cheap these days, they are probably not making a lot of money?
Or they are paying too much for hosting?

~~~
vshabanov
RSS readers are quite resource intensive. They need to continuously update
feeds (even when you're not using the site) and when you reading they need to
remember each post you've read. It's write heavy load that most databases do
not handle well. So you need to shard and use more servers even with
comparatively small number of users.

------
GFK_of_xmaspast
I'm a premium newsblur user and it feels slow and sluggish (with +/\- 800
feeds and about 10k unreads right now), and I really wish it had search, but
I'm sticking with it for now.

~~~
vshabanov
Try bazqux [https://bazqux.com](https://bazqux.com) quite fast and has search.

~~~
c_c_c
I'll forgive your self promotion because I've been trying it for the last
thirty minutes and I like it very much. Good job.

------
randyl
I misread the headline, and thought it was saying NewsBlur is shutting down
one year after Google Reader.

I used NewsBlur for a while, but didn't like the UI. I switched to
InoReader.com, and love it.

------
b0b0b0b
I really wanted prismatic to be the replacement for google reader, but after a
year with it I still feel like I have lots of unmet needs.

------
rip747
what's funny is i remember last year, crying and moaning about the google
reader shutdown and scrambling to find a new newsreader. never really found
one that fit the bill like google reader did.

its been a year now and i honestly don't miss google reader one bit. HN has
become my news readers now :)

------
wnevets
and I havent missed it a single day. I'm sure 98% of google's users feel the
same.

------
esseti
how much is worth the peak?

~~~
rplnt
If my calculations are correct (done by paint.net, so...) the income/expenses
for that period are about 185/139\. So the peak managed to cover all expenses
and more.

------
tw268
I wish there were a newsreader that looked good without the fancy algorithms,
like a newsblur without the terrible UI. Like the old Google Reader

