

Ask HN: Are you tired of Google Reader? - drew_kutchar

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.<p>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.<p>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?<p>Thanks!
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mahmud
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
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!

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richardw
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.

