Show HN: We just launched our MVP, a new RSS Reader | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: We just launched our MVP, a new RSS Reader

subpug.com

153 pointsspxdcz69 comments

RSS isn't ever going to be a big deal. If you are thinking in terms of market size it's never going to be really big. Facebook, and Google+ have both taken the subscription model in a direction that is more consumer friendly.

If you accept that premise, you are building a product for informed, longish-term computer users, and you are treating them like they are beginners. If my intrest was piqued by RSS I probably already use an RSS reader, and have a bunch of feeds I want to use.

You are missing the ability for me to organize my feeds into folders. I have a lot of feeds, and I need folders to triage my reading into a sliding scale from important to least important.

After all of this keep it up, because I am, and I think many others are, willing to pay for an app that does RSS reading well.

Fair point. But if this supported adding and managing feeds of my choice I would certainly give it a try. I'm guessing that this is a test of their reader and hence an MVP.

P.S I currently use Google Reader and am looking for alternatives.

You can add/edit feeds or import an OPML file at http://read.subpug.com/#subscriptions

I agree, but it's still missing folders. Oh, and this is something I forgot in my first point, where is the ecosystem. It's a nice new RSS reader, but it's web only. I use a couple different clients in connection with Google Reader. These guys are starting with nothing.

Try newsblur: http://www.newsblur.com/

As discussed on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1834305

It has folders, hotkeys, and I think I like the layout more than Google Reader (I'm still in the early stages of switching over).

Also open-source (http://github.com/samuelclay), actively developed, and social features coming soon (within the next 2 months). And of course, a history of shipping.

I'm definitely interested in switching RSS readers. I'm not a fan of the recent changes to Google reader, so a solid alternative would definitely be welcome. Like you, I'd be willing to pay to get a product that handled RSS really well.

That's a great argument by itself, but it's also a great argument for the point I was trying to argue in my head: consider making this a paid service. It doesn't take that many users to get a great business running, and a lot of the users will probably be RSS power users, so they will greatly respect the removed cruft and great design.

Google Reader is an atrocious experience, albeit one that probably has a couple of useful apps, and Bloglines is a joke. Fever requires you to roll your own with all the hassle and risk it entails, but a paid, hosted service sounds like a great way to go about it in the way that pinboard.in did compared to del.icio.us.

Just think about it, and if you continue with a free model, you can always consider pivoting, if you find that the current model isn't sustainable. Of course, that means that this is a full-time endeavour, which may or may not fit into your lives.

The current state of the project reminds me of Instapaper in its infancy. It will be interesting to follow you.

It's a pretty app that looks like it's taken a lot of design inspiration from Google Reader. Which is a good thing, I think they nailed it in terms of UI.

That said, I was really hoping you'd have your own sharing mechanism. The major thing Google Reader lost in the transition was the ability to share and comment in a unified manner - having to go to Twitter or Facebook to read comments on something you shared elsewhere is a pain.

Also, doesn't look like there's any tracking of read/unread items.

Google reader user. Agreed: If someone could restore the features google reader killed, I would start using their product immediately.

Specifically:

sharing, comments, bookmarklet for non-rss content.

Float (float.com) has an interesting idea of removing everything except content from facebook/twitter/etc, which I like, but they are still missing a usable webapp and the aforementioned features.

Great start.

However, as a heavy RSS user, an MVP isn't gonna cut it for me.

Couple of specific things are going to prevent me from using your product:

1. Your UI shows way too few feed items on a page. Compared to Google Reader, for example, you display maybe 30% as much content on a single page. That makes reading RSS feeds slow on your product.

2. There is no ability to group RSS feeds in any way. I'm not a single interest kinda of a person, so my RSS subscriptions contain all kinds of content. I don't read all that content the same way, and I don't feel like reading some of the content all the time.

I like the filtering capability you have on the feeds. This is something I've been missing for some time. I wish you'd expand it from simple keywords to maybe regular expression based. Look into how killfiles in Usenet clients used to work for inspiration maybe.

You know what I really like my RSS reader to do? Zoom in and out on command. Show me birds eye view (readable view) of everything, let me scroll fast, but then let me zoom in to the headlines which I may find interesting and then let me zoom in more for details without making me click to visit the site. By zoom-in and zoom-out I mean the way Prezi does it, i.e, the camera zoom in/out and not the Ctrl+ font increase of browser.

Looks really nice, but I'd like to know more about its unique value proposition (what makes me use it instead of Google Reader, where I have all my stars and shares, and great search).

It looks really great and it has some quite comprehensive features. Which actually sends me back to what one of LinkedIn's founder once said[1]: If You're Not Embarrassed By The First Version Of Your Product, You’ve Launched Too Late

If this is the first MVP of the idea, it might be worthwhile checking out Ash Maurya's great post[2] on the subject.

[1] http://articles.businessinsider.com/2009-11-13/strategy/3006...

[2] http://www.ashmaurya.com/2009/11/from-minimum-viable-product...

If You're Not Embarrassed By The First Version Of Your Product, You’ve Launched Too Late

Sort of OT, but I'm not sure this is really broadly useful advice. In the world of iOS apps, for instance, that first impression is often the only one you'll get before people move on. Hard to say which is the correct approach for an app like this but sometimes it pays to polish the hell out of 1.0 instead.

Apple does make iterating your MVP harder. Not impossible, just harder.

But don't forget that MVP is primarily a tool for learning with the least amount of effort. Not less. So, if you are making something nobody wants, why make it very polished? You will just waste more time learning this fact. Time that could be used changing the product/trying something new entirely.

And even on app store: you can iterate with different product names, and different brands. So you can lunch different iterations, possibly A/B testing app name, logo and description, without much extra overhead, all at the same time.

I think it has a lot less to do with release delays in the App store than it does with the attention span of the typical customer. You can iterate all you want but if they've already formed an opinion of your product based on a first impression they're unlikely to give it a second look. All the apps I've released have had a big initial sales spike over the first week or so and never again climbed back anywhere close to those numbers, despite a large number of functional and aesthetic improvements.

You can release multiple products with different names and even different brands (you use different accounts if needed). It may not be cheap, but it is possible. This way you will have the huge spike over and over again (you may change name/logo for different experiments). And please don't use vanity metrics[1] for measuring the outcome.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/30/vanity-metrics/

This interview directly talks about iphone apps and MVPs on its first 5 minutes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Z...

Looks great, congratulations. Three comments:

1. On Chrome in Windows, the smaller fonts look a bit scrunched in a way that makes my eyeballs hurt. Is this configurable?

2. I notice that you say to bookmark the URL, and I presume my user id is stored in a cookie. What happens if I want to read from another device or if I clear my cookies? It would be awesome if you could generate a unique URL for each user. Bonus points if it's easy to say over the phone or type in by hand/from memory (I use at 4-5 devices to browse the web daily - 2 x laptops, Playbook, and my BB).

3. That Tweet sidebar thing is interesting but feels a little laggy. Is there a way to turn it off?

1. Formatting is FUBARed when zooming in (Chrome browser).

2. OPML import? Already have a set of RSS subscriptions, need to be able to import existing feed list, don't wish to reenter all these in…

/goodluck on the venture.

In edit subscriptions you can do an OPML import. I had the same first thought.

What is broken though is they don't seem to support folders.

/thanks, found it! Cannot believe I did not see it there earlier.

Though I do not expect it to work after importing… …I have A LOT of feeds -- I see the subscription titles showing but it seems to be stuck on "refresh" right now…

1. It doesn't seem to remember whether I have seen something before. I have over a hundred items per day in my feeds and I read them erratically, so I don't want to have to remember myself.

2. It would be nice to have a more integrated sharing feature. An ideal method for my group of computational science friends (since migrating off Google Reader and being dissatisfied with long threads on G+) would be linking into a (possibly private) reddit. It would be nice to at least see if the item has been shared yet.

I really like what you guys have done here. Ever since Google Reader switched over to the Google+ design, I've been looking for a replacement.

This is a great MVP, but for me, there is one feature I would NEED before I would consider switching.

Google Reader shows you a count of how many posts are unread, and as you read them, it removes it from the list. That feature is the most important for me. Any plans on addressing this? Or do you already have this and I'm just not seeing it?

If you choose the "Blank" starter pack then you can import your OPML file from Google Reader.

Yes, but that doesn't address the feature that I was looking for.

Too much whitespace in the list view, if I'm using RSS I want to scroll through hundreds of articles in rapid succession and cherry-pick the interesting ones.

Would be nice to be able to import my Google Reader subscription list so I can instantly compare the two tools.

The Tweets and shared comments is an interesting idea, but took me a while to find - this is the one thing that would get me to come back and use this over Google Reader. Nice differentiator.

Huge fan of the logo and its secret onclick event.

I typed cnn.com, nothing happened. I then typed www.cnn.com and I see that it recognized. I then clicked the dog icon, it is still thinking....

I like the interface and the fact that you don't need to sign up. Not sure if I'll remember to come back to this because it really isn't working for me right now.

I'm a heavy RSS user but this doesn't really fit my workflow. I may be different than a lot of other heavy RSS users though.

I'm currently using Google Reader to keep track of things for me. I sync it up with iReadG on my iPhone and then I scan through headlines on my iPhone and star the ones I'm interested in reading. I do this while I'm out and about and need to kill some time while waiting on things in life to happen. Just scanning headlines from HN, Slashdot and TechCrunch usually fills all my mobile downtime.

Then when I get back to the computer I go through the star items and read them, unstarring them as I go.

Your interface would be nice if I could work it into my workflow but it doesn't look setup for that.

Subscription packs are the best part of your idea so far. I suggest you keep them, but spend some time thinking about who your target user is, how you'll tell them about how you'll provide them value, and how you'll provide them value.

Here are some questions I had:

1. what does a user expect to happen next when they click on a subscription pack?

2. why is your landing page dark while your app is light?

3. why isn't there an action when a user clicks "All your favorite websites in one place."

4. why isn't there a clearer call to action?

5. it seems like you're targeting users who don't currently use RSS at all, will they even understand what your product does?

Design is great! Who did it and how can average entrepreneur imitate it.

BTW I thought there will be easy way to import Google reader list but there is none. (I first selected interesting then blank.)

You can import using OPML. I also would like an easier integration method, that and also explaining what OPML is. It took me awhile to figure and I have good knowledge of GR, imagine someone that doesn't.

Hi everyone. We've been away from our computers for a few hours but wow, thanks for the feedback (good and bad). We're going to go through all of your comments (and those that have been submitted by email and Twitter) and prioritize our efforts.

We know there are still lots of things that need improving (handling lots of feeds, how new items are displayed, organizing feeds, etc) - we'll do our best to get to these asap, but wanted to get this 'out the door' as quickly as possible to get your feedback.

It's a great start. Keep rocking it.

Thanks! I'm just going through all the comments again now and importing the requests/issues into Redmine.

On iOS 5:

The design is nice.

Don't show the entire story when you visit one of the categories. Just show headlines.

It rendered terribly slowly, scrolling was jerky, and page navigation was completely unresponsive. Eventually the browser just crashed.

The first category I visited was Science. It showed science stuff.

The next category I visited was Film. It also showed science stuff.

about the science/film problem you're talking about: I had the same impression. What's happening is that your feed is showing science and film articles, but because there was only recent science articles, you had the impression that your feed did not include film articles

Would be nice if you didn't remove the session id from the URL. I would like to bookmark the URL so I don't have to keep the e-mail in my inbox.

Also, frictionless use is cool and all but it would be nice if I could just create a username and password so I know I'll always have access to my feeds.

I put together a usablity review of subpug.com using moustach.io. I hope you find this useful.

http://moustach.io/welcome/e/reviewed/YDtJ9-Su30Q3VH3VGotGnZ...

Good luck.

It shows the same ten posts over and over again. This may be a bug. Want my OPML file?

Same here. It also would be nice to have a selection screen after you do the OPML import to verify if you still want all that crap :)

I love the UI. People have already mentioned this; it needs to keep count of the number of unread articles. Looks very promising though!

I was curious as to what JS Frameworks you've been using besides jQuery. Underscore.js? Backbone.js?

As it is advertised, the subscription info is stored locally. How can it be deleted? I tried to delete the cookies, but it didn't work. Please, don't tell me you are using those naughty evercookies.

I'm curious to know why you didn't just create a chrome extension like http://reederforchrome.tumblr.com/ or Helvetireader.

Seeing some weirdness on chrome+ubuntu:

http://www.zimagez.com/zimage/screenshot-12282011-065319pm.p...

sick! the UI looks like it would feel better on a tablet, you should consider pivoting to be an ipad app since it's oriented for media consumption

good call

Bug report: I am using Opera 11.60 on Linux (64-bit). When I click on "blank" pack, Opera hangs and I have to terminate the application.

It feels very fast and I really enjoy the color scheme. One thing I noticed: On small resolutions the top navigation bar wraps.

Lose the transparency on the top action bar. It's distracting, and I'm not realistically going to read text through it.

I really, really like the navigation using 'j' and 'k'. Thanks for having that.

Really like the UI with the comments on the side Good job!

Very interesting. BTW, why there is horizontal scrolling?

You know, I actually needed something like this, thanks

RSS is alive again.

good job, it's a nice app!

Love the subscription packs and the friction free signup, but once I'd picked a pack, I wanted to go back and add another pack to my set of subscriptions... but couldn't figure out how, probably because this is an MVP.

When looking at my subscriptions I clicked on the pub in the upper left to go to your homepage (to add a pack to my subscriptions) and what it does is change the view in some way that's totally not obvious to me. I get a different top story. Maybe its changing the sort order, but theres' no visual indication of what has changed, only the story I was reading is replaced. I click it again and it switches back.

Great MVP, and bonus points for the effortless signup.

Had the same experience but if you click on the original link from HN again you can add other packs. Probably just needs a link back to that landing page.

Very cool. Sadly, scrolling performance Chrome/MBP+Lion is unacceptably choppy.

same here. got better after everything was loaded

What's 'your MVP'? It looks and sounds like an app...

How does your RSS reader beat the competition? Anything of note?

I believe it stands for 'minimum viable product'[1]. Basically releasing a rough v1.0 that does the bare minimum, and then turning it into the real deal in the next major iteration.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product

RSS is dead & google reader works fine.

If they get this feed properly formatted and delivered to my Kindle daily.. that would make it a real service !

Isn't that kind of a contradictory statement? RSS is far from dead as far as I'm concerned. I agree that the RSS reader space is very crowded, but Reeder was a late entry, and it is, by far, my favorite RSS reader.

RSS is still alive and kicking. Seems like no service has been able to make it gain as much traction as it should.

The recent Google+ integration into Google Reader made the product take a step backwards. Then you have apps like Reeder (which was my favorite at some time), Pulse (became my next favorite), and then Flipboard (which has won me personally).

Except, I feel like something is missing from all of them.

Google Reader has this awesome Sort by Magic feature, but seems to have been broken recently. If applications could use this sorting method and bring in social better (the integration is lacking right now) it would be awesome!

RSS is absolutely awesome. What do you think replaces it?

Google Reader is an RSS reader. Your statement makes no sense.

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