We're now two people and YC-backed. We have so many new big features coming down the pipeline. An iPad app, an updated iPhone app, an Android app, all first-class experiences.
This is the launch of Blurblogs. This is my blurblog: http://samuel.newsblur.com.
NewsBlur is open-source for a few good reasons:
1. NewsBlur makes money off hosting
2. NewsBlur greatest benefit is its network
3. Giving back to the open-source community is in my blood, considering my work with DocumentCloud.
I invite you to use the code for your own benefit. It's Python and JavaScript, with PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and Redis as backends.
I'm happy that you're able to work much more freely on NewsBlur, but as an early premium user, the investment did get me mildly worried about the future of my beloved app that a handful of dedicated people used, and was very well cared for by one guy I trusted my data and workflow with.
My uneducated and selfish hunch for NB's ideal future is one where you keep charging a much larger amount of users (and possibly charge more), avoid any further investment of the VC kind, and continue keeping the latest production source available under a free license.
Do you mean with the investors? Do you perceive or foresee pressure from YC against keeping it open source, or do you believe there will be a shift of incentives (such as the practicality of hosting and sharing no longer being your focus of value for paid service) or technicalities that might prevent you from keeping the code open in the future NewsBlur?
As the continuous availability of the source code is critical in my choosing to use and pay for NewsBlur (and I assume this is the case for a few other users on HN), I'd appreciate any details you can share in this regard.
> I have big plans for what I want to build, but to do it, I need seed funding. After that, my hope is to never raise again and have premiums pay for the service.
Happy to know that's your intention.
* You should set a <title>.
* The site header ("Mission Mission") for the Sutro Tower GIF post is just low-contrast enough to be difficult to read on bad displays. Maybe you should up the contrast threshold on the algorithm you use to select colors.
* Consider collapsing comment sections by default. If Blurblogs take off, it's going to be irritating to scroll past comments for popular posts.
And if blurblogs take off, we will be collapsing comments from "public", but no need to limit growth now when we need it most. But we are planning to limit the height of the story content if it's more than a page-height long.
The article mentions that the product is freemium, but I don't see the upgrade options I remember seeing when I tried Newsblur a couple times earlier. Have you removed the paid version?
Otherwise, you can go to "Choose your 64 sites" under the Manage menu. We will make it clearer on the dashboard later today. Thanks for the very useful feedback!
Small bug report - When I connected my Google Reader account, the progress wheel in the popup window kept spinning indefinitely. If it didn't look so funky, I would have got bored sooner. Anyway, it imported my feeds fine when I reloaded the site, but I thought I should let you know about the glitch.
My personal belief is that if your users love what you've created, they will adopt it and then be happy to pay for it. In comparison, giving them multiple paid options at sign-up is kind off the wrong idea as your user has not had the chance to experience and understand your product.
Newsblur looks good; am going to give it a good try.
This could avoid scenarios where the user might be surprised later on. That's just what I think. I'm pretty sure you'll get mixed feedback on shoving/not shoving the pricing in the user's face.