Do you mostly consume text, or images/rich media? Something about Reader just worked for me. It was partly some blogs I followed and wanted to keep up with reading, but the meat of it for me was just scrolling endless pictures from various design blogs, that i'd sometimes star or label. Or some webcomic that I'd share with my handful of friends that were on there. Or I'd catch up whatever BMX or ski edits that came out. The interface was just clean for seamless and endless scrolling of all that media, (without titles and sources and headings taking up too much space), and the organization was clutch. Nothing else has caught my eye since. I've tried Feedly, old reader, and a few others, but none of them have me coming back for more, I just never got in the habit with them like i did for Reader.
Looking back, I guess it served as a kind of instagram/facebook feed, but for the internet that I wanted to see (which would differ from time to time, sometimes i want webcomics, sometimes I want ffffound <- this is largly something social media has yet to pick up on, the ebb and flow of what our attention wants). But no social media has captured my attention like Reader did...
Reader worked really well for me, too. And killing Reader seemed to send a signal to a lot of people that rss was 'done', whether rightly or wrongly - all that matters is that people believe it. I saw a lot less rss around subsequently. I switched to a few other services but ultimately just faded out on rss in general, which is a shame, as it was nice to have a non-algorithmic-curation feed of stuff I liked.
Isn't Feedly exactly for people like you? I never liked it because I mainly want text, but it always struck me as a reader for people who want pictures.
Looking back, I guess it served as a kind of instagram/facebook feed, but for the internet that I wanted to see (which would differ from time to time, sometimes i want webcomics, sometimes I want ffffound <- this is largly something social media has yet to pick up on, the ebb and flow of what our attention wants). But no social media has captured my attention like Reader did...