

Desperate times call for desperate measures - jack-r-abbit
http://blog.theoldreader.com/post/56798895350/desperate-times-call-for-desperate-measures

======
sitharus
I don't understand why they don't want to charge for it. It will slow down
signups and give them funding to scale up. They could also use invite-style
signups like LiveJournal did back in the day.

I didn't sign up for the old reader because having to pay for it was at the
top of my requirements, on the basis that people are more likely to keep
things going if you're paying for them. Not always true I know, but it does
hold some weight.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
> _on the basis that people are more likely to keep things going if you 're
> paying for them._

That could also make people feel obligated to keep things running when they
really don't want to. Imagine the feeling of still needing to shut down a
service people have paid for because it was still not making enough money to
be worth it. Now you have paid customers you have an actual obligation to. I
can imagine that would be very stressful.

~~~
chii
> shut down a service people have paid for because it was still not making
> enough money to be worth it.

but why would it not be worth the money paid for? you can't just charge some
token market rate, hoping for scale to profit - you _ought_ to charge the
amount it costs plus profit to run it, and so even if you had 1 user, it would
be profitable.

Now, whether this is something the owners want to maintain is a different
question vs can't charge enough to be worth it.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
> _so even if you had 1 user, it would be profitable._

That isn't really the case, though. There is a minimum amount of
infrastructure you need. One paying customer is not going to cover that. And a
project that pays for itself with a little profit is still not always worth it
if you are killing yourself to maintain it, have another job, etc.

------
stevejohnson
I kicked the tires after the Google Reader announcement, but it was always
apparent that the team wasn't able to keep up with the rush of new users. I
think the best outcome here would be a sale to a more dedicated party, but
regardless of that, I can see why they would want to take this route.

They're working on a free service for love. They deserve to do that on their
own terms.

------
jmduke
Reminds me of the drama revolving around phpVirtualBox from a while back:

[http://ahmetalpbalkan.com/blog/a-cry-for-
help/](http://ahmetalpbalkan.com/blog/a-cry-for-help/)

Software and technoloy should be a joy and a light, not a curse.

 _For those who would like to start the usual “VC, funding, mentor” or “charge
for the damn thing” mantras — please, spare it. We’re not in the Valley where
it might be super-easy, and, after all, not everyone wants to be an
entrepreneur. We just love making a good RSS reader._

I hate this false belief that "good RSS reader" and "RSS reader that you have
to pay for" are somehow diametrically opposed to one another.

Best of luck to the team. I hope everything works out.

------
jtolj
For me, Google shutting down Reader was a huge wake-up call that I should be
paying for the things that I depend on as much as I did GReader.

I signed up & paid for both pinboard and newsblur within a week of the
announcement, and purposely avoided theoldreader and others that didn't have
any sort of sustainable business model (although there were/are plenty of
other solid projects out there).

Glad I didn't have to learn that lesson twice.

------
tvladeck
Welp. I guess I'm in no place to complain, but I will anyway.

My college friends and I were very active users of The Actual Old Reader. We
shared a lot of content internally and commented profusely. When Google made
the switch to force everyone onto Google+, our sharing didn't continue but we
still used GReader.

When Google pulled the plug on Reader and we all needed a new place to go, we
discussed a lot internally on which we would all collectively used. We settled
on the Old Reader because of its sharing / commenting features (if there are
others with these features, let me know!). This was just a few weeks ago.

So we didn't pay money, but we paid a lot in time and commitment. This is
frustrating.

~~~
ronaldx
The blog post states " _we value our community very much_ ". On this basis, I
think you have every right to complain, and should do so directly.

~~~
jacalata
I believe it also states, in more words, "but not enough to continue offering
them our time and service, sorry!" so I don't believe complaining would do
anything. I'm sure they are already aware people will be upset.

------
gregwebs
I really like theoldreader because it was a zero-overhead switch from Google
Reader (and I liked things about Google Reader that were changed in other
alternatives that I briefly looked at).

However, I switched to bazqux.com a few weeks ago. It has all the same Reader
features I love, but also shows comments, which is a great feature addition.
Oh, and it feels lightning fast. They charge $9/year and will probably never
get overloaded since they have the worst site name ever (from a marketing
standpoint).

~~~
SudoAlex
Of all the alternatives I've tried today after The Old Reader's announcement
(I've tried about 5 others, and quickly deleted my account from most of them)
- this certainly feels like the best reader for me.

It's fast, blazing fast compared to the alternatives. The UI isn't perfect,
but the speed certainly makes up for it.

~~~
th0br0
Thanks! BazQux looks awesome.

Discovering how to skip all those comments was a bit difficult though, and
it's hard to see whether the current item is marked as read or not but other
than that, I love it so far. Off to discovering how can I edit my profile...

------
jack-r-abbit
Looks like I need to start looking for a replacement for my replacement to
Reader. :(

~~~
jbigelow76
I moved onto the digg reader (digg.com/reader) before TOR crashed when they
were just really really sluggish. The digg reader is close to as fast as
Google Reader was.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
Not having a demo (or a feature list... or even a screenshot) is very
frustrating. It wastes my time and their time to have me signup only to find I
don't like it 2 minutes later. Mind posting a screenshot?

~~~
jbigelow76
[http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2013/06/27/diggreader_wide-6...](http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2013/06/27/diggreader_wide-69f1d78d19447f7e6a13cf25cc2f7326a94bab2a-s6-c30.jpeg)

[http://cdn.as7.org/11_DiggReaderHome.jpg](http://cdn.as7.org/11_DiggReaderHome.jpg)

I pulled a few screen caps from bing for expediency's sake. The UI is very
spartan, lots of whitespace, minimal chrome (UI busy-ness is what drove me
away from Newsblur), and it's fast. One complaint is the large amount of
whitespace when reading the story but it's tolerable. They aren't monetizing
yet, unless they are it's via data aggregating (highly likely I guess) but
there are no ads. I'd like to hear what the long term plans are.

Another user pointed to bazqux.com which has a similarly clean UI but with the
added bonus of pulling in comments which would be a nice time saver. And the
are upfront about charging for the product which makes me feel a little better
about long term prospects. I'll probably put it through the paces speed wise
and see if I want to migrate one last time.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
Thanks. I signed up. It has some UI issues but I can live with that. Reader
wasn't perfect in the UI either. I think I like Digg Reader better than TOR.

------
Jamiecon
This was my favourite Reader replacement. I suppose losing it serves me right
for not donating earlier!

~~~
jack-r-abbit
Same here. I liked it (even if a little flawed) but never donated. I think
this gives me the motivation to self host something that I know won't go away.

------
semanticist
Some of the comments there made me despair and never want to build anything,
ever. So much entitlement from people who have no idea what someone else's
situation is.

It's easy if you're in the US (or the UK) to just throw up a PayPal
integration, set up a Ltd company, and start taking payments into a business
bank account.

It's not going to be trivial everywhere in the world. Rules for minimum
capital and paperwork can vary from 'trivial' to 'traumatic'. Lots of
countries have problems getting payment providers, even PayPal - here's an
article from earlier in the year about how they're gearing up for their
Russian launch sometime this year: [http://www.ewdn.com/2013/05/23/paypal-
receives-license-from-...](http://www.ewdn.com/2013/05/23/paypal-receives-
license-from-russian-central-bank-plans-official-launch-later-in-2013/)

If this was my pet side project, in the UK, yeah I'd take a couple of days to
set up a Ltd company and do a PayPal or Stripe or GoCardless integration, but
not everyone has it as easy as we do.

These guys have gone above and beyond for a service that they can't easily
turn into a business, so now it's pretty much just heartache and woe, and
that's just sad.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
For sure. There is no need to go all ragey on them. The system crashed, they
got it back up, they got totally overwhelmed and are now taking actions best
for their lives. No fault there. Best of luck to them. I've already moved on.
;)

------
stephen_mcd
Please give kouio a try! [https://kouio.com](https://kouio.com)

We were avid users of Google Reader, and have strived to remain faithful to
its functionality in building kouio, like the Old Reader did. We've also
understood that in order for a service like this to operate, it needs to be
paid for. Kouio is free at the moment as we want to finish off a few more
features before we start charging, but we're probably about a month away from
switching to paid accounts.

Some early users noted some performance issues, but those have since been
resolved. Please give it another try :-)

~~~
bdellovibrio
Will one of the new features be search?

I've just imported my OPML file from the Old Reader into Kouio and it looks
great! At first glance, you've done a great job with the interface - this
could be my new RSS reader. However, I really, really need to be able to
search.

~~~
stephen_mcd
Yep, the API powering the UI actually supports it already, we just need to
expose it in the UI. We're madly blasting through missing features, so stay
tuned :-)

~~~
bdellovibrio
Good to hear! One quick question - how do I reorder feed folders in the left
panel?

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shrikant
This is unfortunate.

FWIW, InoReader is a great old-style, no-frills, non-"intelligent" RSS reader.
[https://www.inoreader.com](https://www.inoreader.com)

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norswap
I picked the old reader because it was a no-fuss google reader replacement.
Feedly is bloated and was slow to boot. I also didn't want to pay to read my
feeds.

I'm now switching to Digg Reader, which is equally simple, and has an android
app coming soon (the iOS app is already out).

------
webwanderings
Never felt comfortable with this service from day one.

By now, I have tested many and have stuck around long with InoReader. However,
I must confess that nobody is doing this better than Feedly team under the
circumstances. So I give up looking anywhere else for now.

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sbarre
While I wouldn't push on them the suggestion that they open-source it, they
could try to sell copies, perhaps?

I'm surprised the idea of selling a self-hosted version of their platform
hasn't come up (like Fever or something else).

------
pauljonas
Gave The Old Reader a try but it failed to even properly import my Google
Reader feeds -- it stopped at the letter 'H'. Also, did not note any feature
it did better than Feedly or any of the other competitors.

Feedly is OK, in some ways a notch up from the stagnant Google Reader, but
lack of search is so frustrating and disappointing.

------
chii
i expected the influx of traffic to cause some (free) services to fail, and so
to hedge my bets, i signed up for several that i found as acceptable Google
Reader replacements. Hurray for insurance policy!

