Digg Reader is planning to shut down on March 26
digg.com
digg.com
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
1: https://www.wired.com/2013/06/inside_digg_reader/
2: https://gizmodo.com/digg-reader-hands-on-your-google-reader-...
"So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish"
This is only a sampling of the issues - open-sourcing huge projects is actually much trickier than you might think!
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.
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".
Also: "Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… " -Theodore Roosevelt
This game designer only open-sourced his code for the player object. As I am not a seasoned game developer I have enjoyed going through this code and learning some of the techniques.
Maybe Digg can help bring up the next generation based on their techniques. Or maybe it helps foster a discussion around how not to implement something.
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.
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.
It's a paid feed reader (so if you like to move between closing free readers every few years it's not for you).
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.
Plus I consider the fact that it operates using a freemium model a great benefit as there are no ads, it is less likely to close shop out of the blue, and it is less likely to be selling user data to support itself.
Best part is that you can create a random email address to sign up to e.g., email notifications from organizations that don’t have RSS. This requires their 50 USD plan, but I’m just glad to support them!
Other people use The old reader which looks and feels like the old Google Reader.
Does anyone know if there are any Android apps that interface with Newsblur like BeyondPod can with Feedly?
It's just like the old Google Reader, but 1) still alive, and 2) $20/yr subscription.
Absolutely worth it.
Let's see what happens when reddit tries to do a redesign ;)
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/7ul5k9/hey_were_here_...
The power user change made everyone flock to reddit.
And thoughts on this vs newsboat[1] which claims that newsbeuter isn't being updated anymore?
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....
It's currently a beta version, and i'd love to have some feedback :-)
thanks !