> The difference is that there was a community around Reader’s social features.
Are social features the main selling point of RSS readers? I mean I just use mine to know when there's a new blog post/webcomic posted on a few sites I follow, without having to give my email or use another platform like social media to know about it. And I'd use the social features which are present on the blogs, under the control of the blog owner(s), if there's any. Or maybe my use case is not the most common one?
Though I agress about the signal Google sent by killing GR.