
Digg Reader is planning to shut down on March 26 - rb808
http://digg.com/reader#
======
jashkenas
And so the wheel turns...

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](http://blog.digg.com/post/49264812779/were-still-learning)

1:
[https://www.wired.com/2013/06/inside_digg_reader/](https://www.wired.com/2013/06/inside_digg_reader/)

2: [https://gizmodo.com/digg-reader-hands-on-your-google-
reader-...](https://gizmodo.com/digg-reader-hands-on-your-google-reader-life-
raft-is-h-530930770)

3:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5894290](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5894290)

~~~
rb808
to be fair they did a good job, was fully functional quickly. I've had 5 good
years with no ads.

------
tschellenbach
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](https://github.com/getstream/winds)

------
gamedna
Disappointed that their exit strategy did not include open-sourcing their RSS
Reader and letting someone else carry the torch.

"So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish"

~~~
geofftrojans
What is the downside to doing this? Seems like a no-brainer.

~~~
tobek
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!

~~~
gamedna
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.

~~~
joshstrange
> 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".

~~~
gamedna
Most of what you say is speculative. Without their code we will never be
certain for sure.

Also: "Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means
effort, pain, difficulty… " -Theodore Roosevelt

------
splitbrain
I can't recommend inoreader.com enough. A worthy successor to Google reader.
(I am not affiliated, just a happy user)

~~~
fiveFeet
Would you recommend it compared to feedly?

~~~
splitbrain
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.

~~~
wesrey
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.

------
rsoto
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.

And that's not good for an open web.

~~~
CalRobert
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.

------
bouncingsoul
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.

Not looking forward to finding a replacement.

------
eugenv
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](https://www.zuperlist.com)

------
vshabanov
Can't resist to recommend my own BazQux Reader
[https://bazqux.com](https://bazqux.com)

It's a paid feed reader (so if you like to move between closing free readers
every few years it's not for you).

~~~
phonon
Current customer, really happy with it, though I wonder if there are any new
features in the pipeline...?

~~~
vshabanov
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.

~~~
phonon
Mobile view is great--thanks!

------
pk78
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!

~~~
finchisko
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.

~~~
sewalsh
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.

------
rb808
Its becoming a habit. Any good alternatives?

~~~
nathcd
If you're cool with paid[0] or self-hosted[1], I've heard Newsblur is nice.

[0] [https://newsblur.com/](https://newsblur.com/)

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

~~~
WorldMaker
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.

------
AndrewDucker
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.

------
TekMol
I never really understood how Digg managed to fuck up completely and never
return to the battlefield. Any body here who knows what happened?

~~~
BlackLotus89
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 ;)

~~~
krrrh
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.

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/7ul5k9/hey_were_here_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/7ul5k9/hey_were_here_to_talk_about_that_desktop_redesign/)

------
emit_time
I'm using Feedbin for now. Tried hosting miniflux 2.0 but there seem to be a
few bugs at the moment.

------
CaptSpify
This is why I enjoy hosting my own reader ([https://tt-rss.org/](https://tt-
rss.org/)). But I do wish I could find one with a CLI interface.

~~~
rinze
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.

[1] [https://newsbeuter.org/](https://newsbeuter.org/)

~~~
CaptSpify
This looks awesome, thanks for the heads up!

And thoughts on this vs newsboat[1] which claims that newsbeuter isn't being
updated anymore?

[1] [https://newsboat.org/](https://newsboat.org/)

~~~
rinze
I didn't know about it, but you're absolutely right. Newsbeuter has a notice
on their README file to that effect and they recommend newsboat[1].

Newsbeuter works fine for me for now, but it's good knowing that. I'm glad I
saved your comment in the morning so I could reply later at work :D

[1]
[https://github.com/akrennmair/newsbeuter/blob/master/README....](https://github.com/akrennmair/newsbeuter/blob/master/README.md)

------
ksec
50+ Comments and dozen of alternative named, not a single mention of feedly? I
thought it was the Google Reader in modern era.

------
guybedo
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](http://aktu.io)).

It's currently a beta version, and i'd love to have some feedback :-)

thanks !

------
luminarious
Why can't they just charge for it?

------
xtiansimon
Any solutions to save Saved bookmarks?

~~~
sangupta
I just published a command-line tool for the same:
[https://github.com/sangupta/digg-reader-
dump](https://github.com/sangupta/digg-reader-dump)

------
linhuiwu
can't understand why they must shut down.

