[LINK] 'The End of Google Reader ...'

[John Hilvert]

The point of an RSS reader is to gather data on what you are interested in
following on the Net without having to join a mailing list or any other
social media thingy like Facebook or Twitter.

There are many alternatives to Google Reader. But few alternatives to its
ability to synch other RSS readers on various platforms.

Up to now you could check what was on the agenda for your interest in the
morning on (say) your PC and then later check updates on the ipad or smart
phone during the day. Later in the evening you could check the PC again for
further developments and not wade through feeds you have already maked as
read.

You could use different reader apps because they relied on a default system
for checking what feeds you'd read already via Google Reader.

The horror that awaits RSS obsessives and many journalists is that there
may be no way to sync RSS feeds when Reader stops. There's too many
duplicated feeds to check without a sync arrangement.

I think also Reader is vital for researchers that don't want to subscribe
to lists or have to follow/friend certain people on Twitter for privacy
reasons generally.

The problem with crowd aggregating sites like Reddit is that they have
their own biases. In any event, there is an RSS feed for Reddit per
http://www.reddit.com/r/newreddits/comments/m8sni/introducing_rssreddits_subscribe_to_any_rss_feed/


What may happen is that a new synch service possibly for a fee will emerge
over the next few months to take Google Reader's place to synch feeds
across all devices. I think there's a lot of momentum for an alternative
RSS sync (for a fee) service this time round.

In the absence of an alternative system for synchronising feeds, we either
stick to a single cloud-based reader all the time to check for new feeds or
a single PC-based system. You can't have both, which is what Reader's
synchronisation offered.


On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 12:28 PM, Jim Birch <planetjim at gmail.com> wrote:

> David Boxall wrote:
>
> Come to think of it, if they didn't charge for it, can it be called a
> > business?
> >
>
> RSS has probably had it's day.  I doubt that one in 100 young Internet
> users would use RSS or even know what Reader actually does.  They would
> follow a Facebook page which can do similar things and a whole lot more,
> or, use a site like Reddit that incorporates "crowd filtering" of junk from
> the aggregation.  ...



> On the Internet, there is for practical
> purposes an infinite amount of material available so the quality of your
> information is more related to the quality of your filtering.  The
> practices and tools of people who grew up with the net reflect this.
>
> Jim
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>



-- 
John Hilvert