
Ask HN: Why do RSS Readers (mostly) suck? - kloncks
I've had a long love/hate relationship with RSS. For something with 'simple' as part of its name, I feel like it really hasn't lived to its each potential.<p>I've used Google Reader (horrible) and NetNewsWire and a plethora of mobile RSS-readers. I read a lot of news from a lot of sources (68 total sources in my NNW?) and as much as I do want to go in and read EVERY single article some days, other days I'm just tired by the 2500+ articles that pop up.<p>Pulse seems to be on the right track to do something. Anything else going down that path?<p>What's wrong with RSS Readers today? Why do they suck?<p>Is the solution to a better RSS Reader something more visually appealing (ie: Pulse) or something that simply filters the news (diggv4 or HN)?
======
jerf
Sit down and really write out your requirements.

Two things will emerge from that exercise: 1. there probably is in fact a
reader out there that meets it, you just haven't found it yet or 2. your
requirements require solving the AI-complete problem of perfectly determining
what you are interested in.

Generally I find most people slot into #2. I am not kidding. I've been
listening to this complaint for about 8 years now and every time I've worked
with someone, it's one of the two above, and usually #2.

A third possibility is that you are just trying to read too much, period, if
even an AI-complete filter would still leave you with too much. The suck may
not lie with the software, it may in the requirements.

~~~
joe_the_user
The problem of reasonably determining what someone is interested in from what
they've previously read, skimmed and skipped shouldn't be "AI complete."

It only involves matching patterns to key-words. It might not be easy and the
results might not be perfect but it _seems_ possible. Using data from friends
and finding the best correlates could help too. You could use the Netflix
algorithm or other magic.

I suspect that's why today's readers don't satisfy - they aren't there yet and
it's easy to imagine they could be.

~~~
bravura
I agree with your claim that recommendation algorithms aren't AI complete, but
for different reasons.

"It only involves matching patterns to key-words." False. Recommendation might
be far trickier.

Nonetheless, if you can do recommendation perfectly, it still doesn't mean
that you can solve NLP, machine vision, control (robotics), planning, or any
of the other major AI tasks.

~~~
joe_the_user
Well, I was speaking broadly...

But the point is that we have many examples of recommendation systems that do
work reasonably well and working reasonably well is what I suspect would
satisfy most users.

Further, a reader which could learn reasonably well from passive observation
would give users the base do explicit tagging and rating.

------
conesus
I think I created a very nice feed reading experience with NewsBlur:
<http://www.newsblur.com>.

It shows the original site, allows you to read as you normally would, but
keeps track of the stories you're scrolling past.

It also allows you to filter stories based on what you like and dislike about
them: words/phrases in the title, tags and categories, authors, and the
publisher themselves. There is a slider that allows you to show/hide stories
based on this filter. It's very fast, too.

I am writing an iPhone app so you can use NewsBlur everywhere. It's just a
hobby project, and people have so far been impressed. But I would love for
NewsBlur to become a useful tool that people choose to use.

I wrote it because I was also dissatisfied with readers, especially Google
Reader. I also knew Python (Django!), JavaScript, and wanted to put them
together to test my abilities.

~~~
josip0
Awesome work! I'm definitely using this over Google Reader from now on!

But there are few tiny details I hope will be fixed soon: The "Original" tab
is the default one - which slows down the whole thing if I open some content-
heavy site, and the reason why I use feed readers in first place is not to
have to watch those horrible sites at all, so it would be nice if we could
change the default view.

The other thing is that there is no way to change the folder to which certain
feed belongs. As well as someone before me commented, you can't delete feeds
either.

~~~
conesus
The default view is the last used view for that feed. I'm planning to have
that in later today.

Drag and drop moving feeds is coming sometime this Summer, but you can delete
a feed right now. There is a "manage" button at the bottom of the feed bar.

------
neonfunk
I haven't tested it, but I'm intrigued by Shuan Inman's Fever reader
(<http://feedafever.com/>). Basically the idea is that you separate your feeds
into two distinct types: essential feeds that you read completely, and
supplemental, high-volume feeds (aggregator-type blogs, like Engadget). Then
the essentials are cross-referenced with the supplementals to see what you're
likely to be interested in.

I have a similar strategy, but instead of trying to manage the "supplementals"
in my RSS reader, I try to a) identify them, and b) banish them back to the
browser where they belong. Identifying them can be tricky, at least for me,
because I tend to think that feeds I've been reading for a long time are
essential, when often they're not. Removing a lot of politics blogs from my
reader I swear has made me less stressed, and I don't feel any less informed.

I think the higher volume of content means we have to become better at
_selection_ — not only in choosing what we read, but also in identifying and
_not_ reading what is noisy and lacking in substance, even when tempting (
_ahem, HuffPo_ ). Edit: and I'm not sure algorithms are the solution; I think
it's something our generation will have to learn — to be our own conscious
curators.

~~~
danh
I'm using essentially the same strategy. Basically I split feeds in two
categories:

"Fresh" ones I either read on the spot, or mark-all-as-read. These are the
ones I usually check frequently, and very quickly. And I don't have to feel
bad about marking all as read :-)

"Evergreens" are ones I like to read entirely, but not necessarily now.

I'm using Google Reader, but these days mostly through the splendid Reeder on
the iPhone (<http://reederapp.com/>).

~~~
tortilla
I really like Reeder for the iPhone. Google Reader fluid app on the desktop
and Reeder for the iPhone works great for me.

~~~
neonfunk
Reeder for iPad is great, too; really fast UX.

~~~
evaneykelen
+1

------
thought_alarm
I use and love Google Reader. I use the List mode (as opposed to Expanded) and
my work flow is the same whether I'm at my desktop, iPhone, iPad, or
Blackberry.

A handful of feeds I insist on reading everything, which means I hit J-J-J-J
to get through them all. But most I merely skim the unread titles for things
that look interesting, and when I'm done I hit Mark As Read to clean up the
rest.

I like how I can do this at feed-level, category-level, or with all unread
items at once.

And if I'm mobile and I want to see something from my desktop, I star it.

Admittedly, the last time I considered using a thick-client reader was way,
way back in 2004 when I was still Windows-only, and I wasn't happy with
anything I saw. I've used Google Reader since it was released in 2005, and
I've had no reason to use anything else.

~~~
macemoneta
The other advantage to Google Reader is that the processing is offloaded. I
have _many_ active feeds, and when performing an update my local client on my
8GB quad-core raid-0 system would grind away - no matter what client I used.
With Google Reader, it's Google that is doing the data collection and
processing, making it light-weight enough for anything that can run a browser.

------
ary
I wondered this myself until I hit upon the simple solution of deleting feeds
with too low a signal to noise ratio (for my personal tastes). Expecting RSS
readers to tease out relevance means having to give them an idea of what's
relevant to you. This seems to be a self-inflicted problem on the part of
people who use feed readers. I've tended to think I "needed" to follow more
than I could possibly consume and retain. Pruning my feed list not only helped
with overall comprehension of feeds I'm interested in, but eased a somewhat
bothersome feeling that I was falling behind on a keeping up to date.

Personally I ditched NetNewsWire after Reeder for the iPad came out. I have
Reeder on my both my iPhone/iPad and just use Google Reader for those times I
check feeds on my notebook. The user experience (note that I didn't say user
_interface_ ) it provides is astounding. Navigating feeds, marking
read/favorite, and the article typesetting/layouts are all the best I've seen
in an RSS client to date. Combine something like Reeder with a carefully
curated feed list and I don't really see there being much of a problem.

~~~
rufo
I've had a similar transition here - I've pruned almost all high-volume blogs
from my Google Reader, and focused more on people whose opinion I value very
highly, Twitter, or social news sites (HN/Reddit/etc.)

So far it's worked very well. I still seem to find out about everything I'd
care about, but have a post volume on Google Reader of around 60 posts a day.
I star anything longer I'm interested in for later reading on iPad/iPhone
(either through Reeder or Instapaper).

I probably sort through several times more tweets, but that's something I'm
far more likely to do when I have 30-60 seconds - so it's spread out
throughout the day, and anything longer winds up in Instapaper for me to do at
a later date.

In short: Try social filtering. Find people who share interests and
blog/Tweet/etc. about them, and let them be your filter.

------
mindcrime
The most obvious thing is that they don't do enough to help you filter the
wheat from the chaff. The sheer volume of news that's available is too much
for anybody to consume... it is almost literally like trying to drink from a
firehose.

So our readers need to do a better job of helping us figure out which stories
are relevant/interesting to us, give us ways to skim and summarize without
reading the whole article, filter out "dupes", etc.

~~~
mhd
The problem is that unless that filtering works magically in the background,
it just adds interface debris. And it's easy to reach a threshold there, where
just scanning for the stuff to filter (hidden amongst the UI elements) and you
might as well be better off doing your filtering yourself.

Which right now works best for me. If I use Google Reader directly, it's set
up to use the re-reader style, at home I use NetNewsWire with the subscription
list hidden. So to browse through it, I can mostly use keyboard shortcuts, so
skipping something is easy. Reading is comfortable enough, but if the article
is too long, I either open it in a background browser window or send it to
Instapaper.

Works well enough for me, although if I had more newspaper-style story
listings in there, that just contain the headlines and link to the main story,
filtering and adding to the queue might be more difficult.

And alternative would be some kind of social filtering, but that's close
enough to HN or Reddit or just listing the links you've got on your twitter
inline (c.f. <http://news.peepcode.com/>)

------
latch
A friend recently launched <http://feedingo.com/> which basically tries to
make the user experience as friendly as possible.

Pricing is the only problem, but after getting feedback he plans on trying to
address that promptly (like $5/yr or something, for a non-free version)

~~~
peppaaro
I'm that friend! I had the same feelings about RSS as the OP, so I created
<http://feedingo.com>.

Most RSS readers try to be something they're not: "it's like reading email",
"it's like reading a magazine" etc. Feedingo is a web app with an interface
that makes reading RSS as easy as possible.

It's true that the current pricing that I launched with needs to be changed,
but sign up for the free version and try it out while im working on that.

------
davidwparker
I think you just need to think about what you want, and think about what
sources you read from. You say you have 68 sources in your feed, whereas I
have ~100.

Personally, I like Google Reader, but I don't use that to read my RSS (just
manage it). Instead, I use Google/ig. I have several different categories
setup and I don't necessarily read everything. One of the categories I have
setup is mRead (short for mark as read) and I don't really read those articles
(often), but I still subscribe incase I see a headline that screams my name,
or if I want to use Google Reader to do a search within my subscriptions for
something specific.

If you have too much noise in your RSS versus signal, than you may want to
double check what you've subscribed to and cut back, or add a "mRead" category
of your own.

------
peppaaro
I think there's an issue with people's expectations of their Feed Readers. If
you add 100+ feeds then expect the reader to make it easy to read every single
post, that will never happen.

Feed Readers work best, and are much more realistic when you treat them like
Twitter. You can follow 100+ people, but you don't expect to read every single
tweet that they send out. If you miss a post, oh well, it's yesterday's news.

Just log into your reader of choice when you have free time, read the latest
news, then go about your day guilt free.

plug: <http://feedingo.com>

------
amh
Free tip if you want to write a better RSS reader: research Usenet newsreaders
like trn or tin. Many of the problems with RSS that everyone is grappling with
now were solved (to varying degrees of success) decades ago. Usenet news and
RSS aren't 100% analogous of course, but they are similar enough that there's
a lot of man-years of thought which can be reused.

------
chanux
I think it's not the RSS readers' fault. It's the whole _reading on internet_
that sucks.

P.S. - <http://goodnoows.com> did look promising. Found on HN recently.

------
dotBen
I'm not sure if the question is aimed at geeks (ie HN crowd) or in general,
but my own observations from previously working at a leading news website
indicates that people find the lack of visual aesthetic disappointing in News
Readers.

Images are often not included in RSS feeds, and if they are are then they are
only shown once you are viewing an item.

When we are triaging which stories to read on a news/blog site, imagery plays
an important as we scroll and select - and I don't think I've seen any RSS
readers which show you a feed item's images at the story selection level.

The lack of site aesthetic/look and feel maybe less important to geeks but
end-consumers also miss that when they are viewing news stories in a reader.
In other-words, when I read CNN's feed in my reader I don't get any of CNN's
site aesthetic.

Finally, don't forget comments and also the serendipity of suggested related
content -- both of which are also missed out when we read stories in a news
reader.

------
boboliak
Check out Yahoo Pipes. This under-appreciated tool can help you be more
selective in the news you actually look at.

<http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/>

~~~
bumbledraven
I used it to make an RSS feed which only shows stories that make it into the
top 10 on HN.
[http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=91d82e993e4607b9f...](http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=91d82e993e4607b9ff5382bfaf2043e8)

------
younata
If you're willing to forgo graphics, I find newsbeuter
(<http://www.newsbeuter.org>) to be a great reader.

It has excellent mutt-esque key bindings, amazing customizability, etc.

------
swalberg
I use Feed on Feeds, a PHP script that runs on my home machine so I can access
it from anywhere. It pulls in feeds once an hour and I view them in a big
list. It's got a bookmarklet that makes it easy to add a new feed when I'm
looking at a site I like.

My workflow is to scroll down the list of unread feeds. If something looks
interesting, I either read it within the browser window, or I open the article
in a new tab and continue scanning. When I hit the end of the list, I "mark
all as read". If I don't finish the list I can mark everything up to the one
that's visible as read. Then I go through the tabs I've already opened.

I follow about 200 feeds, most of which are infrequent posters, so I'm going
through about 100-200 items a day. Out of those I find I open up maybe 5 or
10. Since I'm scanning everything in a row I can go through the list in a few
minutes if I check a couple of times a day.

In most cases I've found that high volume feeds have the good stuff duplicated
elsewhere, so I can unsubscribe from the high volume one (though for some
reason I still subscribe to Slashdot, even though I learned about all the good
stuff a few days prior from other feeds)

The Feed On Feeds interface is also so sparse it doesn't get in the way.

------
blhack
I wrote myself an RSS reader that does exactly what I want...which is
aggregate links for me.

It's here: <http://newsyndicated.com> if anybody is interested.

The only real "feature" of it is the ability to make a sort of "meta rss" feed
so that you can share links that you have "liked" with your friends.

------
petercooper
I think you need to categorize your feeds by importance. There are some sites
you will surely want to catch everything from. There are others where you do
not. Do not categorize your feeds by topic but by importance.. that way you
can read the "Must Read" folder every day and hit mark all as read on the
"Less Important" (or similar) folder if you haven't got the time. That's how I
manage my Google Reader and it works a treat!

That aside, relating to filtering the news, my site at <http://coder.io/> is
doing exactly that but with _only_ coder/programming related news. Still in
alpha and very early days but I'm hoping it will resolve the problems you
raise for one tiny niche.

------
deanberris
I would say it's a combination of a number of reasons, some -- if not all --
relate to the technologies encapsulated in RSS.

First, because RSS by design is meant to just be metadata, and because it's
really hard to render HTML (especially those that are not well-formed) the
readers typically have to jump through so many hoops to get things just
working.

Second, I think it's also because the RSS readers are typically developed by
non-designers. Although Google Reader keeps it simple, it's utilitarian and
mostly not very pleasant to look at. I've tried others (which are also free)
but typically it doesn't come close to making it enticing to read.

Maybe someday someone will do a feed reader that renders articles in a sane
and readable way.

~~~
peppaaro
Hey dean, give my reader <http://feedingo.com> a look. As an example of an RSS
reader created by a designer.

------
codingthewheel
Does anybody know if there's an RSS reader that allows regular expression
tagging across feed content? Eg, show me all RSS posts that contain "iPhone"
or that match the regex "(?:iPhone|iPad|iPod|Apple|Android)" etc, as a simple
example.

------
kes
Try Fever: <http://feedafever.com/>

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
I love Fever. Putting the high volume news sites as "sparks", and the high
signal feeds that I like to read everything from as "kindling", gives a great
way of seeing trending topics when you have the time, but without seeing a
giant unread count in your list.

Well worth the one-time fee and setting it up on my Linode box.

------
jsz0
Is it the RSS readers that suck or the content itself? If you can avoid these
sites that just aggregate content or provide second and third hand accounts of
the same items it's easy to trim down your reading list.

------
ducuboy
I know it sounds like an ad - because it really is - but <http://earlyedd.com>
wants to be the solution for the RSS problem
(<http://blog.earlyedd.com/post/739958248/the-problem>).

EarlyEdd is the RSS reader that shapes on your interests. It discovers people
reading pretty much the same stuff as you do (the fellows), and it compiles a
relevant news edition especially for you. Give it a try ;)

------
auronin
Most RSS readers suck because they a) are too slow and b) assume you want to
read every article i every feed.

I've not tried all the suggestions here (Reeder and Fever sound interesting)
but having used GReader and Feedly I keep coming back to using Firefox Live
Bookmarks with the LiveClick plugin. I can very quickly see and scan what's
new. And with XMarks the feeds can be synced between your computers. Horses
for courses I guess.

------
beef623
I've tried several Firefox plugins, Outlook, and a few others that I can't
remember and finally settled with Google Reader.

Not sure why you think it's horrible. It's always available from wherever I
am, mobile or desktop. Adding feeds is as easy or easier than most other
readers I tried, and it even creates feeds for sites that don't have them.
Also, the sharing and commenting features are nice.

------
ithayer
Agreed. I put up a side project at <http://beta.crunch3.com>, which was an
RSS-on-twitter concept. The interface is "slidey", similar to Pulse, but it
gets relevant feeds from twitter, and takes screenshots like Google Fast Flip.
I didn't continue development on it, so it's a little slow & the server will
probably melt.

------
Concours
I recently launch <http://www.gmbhnews.com> as a mobile rss feed reader, give
it a try and let me know if it solves your problem, all you need is a webkit
broser for a better rendering.

For the desktop, you could try <http://www.mcsquare.me> , it should be fine as
well.

------
l4u
Some readers cannot detect duplicated posts.

~~~
kloncks
Well, especially when the same news story, say Yahoo getting $37/share from
Microsoft, is reported on by TechCrunch, Mashable, TNW, RRW, SAI, etc.

------
TrevorBurnham
I'm reading this in NetNewsWire for the iPad, a beautiful, slick, polished app
that syncs with Google Reader. I have no complaints.

It sounds like you're subscribing to too many feeds. 2500+ items? You need to
do an audit, cut that figure in half, then see if you're still unhappy with
your RSS app.

------
yurylifshits
After trying a lot of choices TwitterTim.es is my favorite. It creates a
personal newspaper from links popular among friends-of-friends of my Twitter
account. It produces very very relevant results for me.

------
sandaru1
I have a quite good experience with feedly. It's a firefox extension which
integrates with google reader. The integration seems to have some bugs with
new "shared items", other than that it's perfect.

~~~
thegyppo
Feedly rocks, I prefer the magazine like appearance to reading feeds
(especially when I've got so many).

------
ScottWhigham
Wow - I love mine (FeedDemon: <http://www.feeddemon.com/>). So great - does
almost everything I've ever wanted

------
eli
Different people use RSS in very different ways.

------
adw
Reeder on the iPad is spectacularly good.

~~~
joe_the_user
Perhaps you could give some reasons why?

~~~
neonfunk
Immaculate UI/UX. Whether in landscape or portrait orientation, there are many
clever flourishes: it uses Tweetie's "pull up to refresh" mechanism for moving
between articles in a feed; or you can swipe an article left or right to
return to the feed index; or you can _pinch_ the article/feed to return to all
of your feeds. In a feed index view, you can swipe a list item to the left or
right to either toggle the read state or the starred state.

The feed index is designed very similarly to the iPad Photos app: you can
either pinch open a folder to view the feeds within it separately, or you can
tap it to view all of the articles in a combined view; similarly, you can
pinch open a individual feed to preview of the articles within it.

Additionally, Reeder caches articles and images for offline reading; and the
top-level feed organization is pretty sensible, too... it's separated into 3
sections: read, unread, and starred. It's also extremely fast, having been
rewritten to use SQLite instead of CoreData.

~~~
adw
What you said, plus it looks really, really nice.

------
phrotoma
IMHO it's the lack of obvious manual control over the special sorting
algorithm that causes readers to suck.

------
Zakuzaa
Do we need an open source techmeme?

------
cmoscoso
Because they are (mostly) web apps.

------
thehigherlife
Www.Netvibes.com is my favorite.

------
mikek85
get better at being ignorant

------
u48998
RSS readers are fine, Google Reader is better. The problem is in user
experience and how they use it. If you do not prioritize and constantly worry
about missed or unread items, you will only end up blaming your reader. The
trick is in organizing, prioritizing and ignoring the unread/missed items.
With these three strategies, you can effectively absorb unbelievable amount of
data on daily basis.

------
humblepatience
I have A, B, and C tags ordered by "importance" to me - i.e. mostly rss feeds
where I want to read or skim every entry.

The rest are ordered by category/tag.

Works fine for me!

Also I use Postrank to turn some of the high-volume into low-volume high-
importance feeds.

