Announcing the New Feedly Mobile and Welcoming 3 Million Reader Refugees

A web-based Feedly is their top request: http://feedly.uservoice.com/forums/192636-suggestions/filter...

Please pile on additional votes to keep the pressure up.

For what it's worth, they claim they are not monitoring your browsing: http://blog.feedly.com/2008/06/18/feedly-and-privacy/

But you're right, still a good idea to push for the web version regardless.

Yeah, I won't use feedly because 1) wtf browser extention and 2) needs a google login? Come on! I'm supposed to believe this service is going to replace google reader and they can't demonstrate it running without google reader's backend yet? Nor without a browser extension? #1 gives the appearance of incompetence and #2 smells like vaporware.

Probably. It's marketing.

Similar here, but I haven't used Google Reader for more then 2 years. After all the buzz I thought I'd give rss readers another try. (It didn't last long.)

Same here.

Most probably for tracking. I do not really see any other reason.

The problem with them is that their OPML import times are ridiculous.

I've literally been waiting over 2 weeks for 1 OPML file with about 30-40 feeds in it to be imported now.

They really need to step up during this advantageous time for them and spin up more servers to handle imports.

I've been checking in every few days and their import rate seems to be less than a thousand OPML files a day (when I signed up weeks ago, it was around 25000 users ahead of me with OPML files to be imported and I'm still waiting). Not giving me much confidence in their company at this early stage.

I wanted to feel comfortable with wherever I moved and learn the lay of the land.

I see adds already. Might be one source of income.

Amazon referral URLs, currently in place.

Hold on, who's the whining party here? ;)

If you take out the whining people out of the three million, you still have a pretty good user base. A user base which just might be willing to pay if there's a good service. Heck, I'd pay if there was something significantly better than the free Feedly.

I trialed several things. I went into Feedly with the expectation it wasn't free. I was actually surprised when it never charged me, and I find myself hoping they will, as I'm not really interested in following another service like this into the inevitable sludgy morass of ads that all free services like this degenerate into. So far it's the winner for me, since I've ended up moving a lot of my RSS consumption to my phone, which has made the final contenders a rather short list.

Is there any actual evidence that paid services are more reliable than free ones? Seems like a non-viable paid service is just as bad as a non-viable free one. I guess paid services feel worse about shutting down... unless they get acquired.

You imply paid product somehow would be immune to being shut down. Which sounds about right - there's no precedent that product which charges subscription fees was ever discontinued. Or is there?

>Bunch of whining free riders. Now I understand why Google dumped you

You... you don't understand even the very basics of Google's business model, do you?

Spoiler: 99% of their revenue is not derived from direct user transactions to them.

Free is a red herring, plenty of paid services lasted less than Google Reader.

The key is making sure all the layers in your stack are either commodities or can be self-hosted.

For example, proprietary SaaS/PaaS services - bad. Generic and interchangeable Linux systems - good. You can build on top of the latter knowing that you can switch if the service is killed.

Then, for non-standard components (e.g., the application), you must either host it yourself or make sure you have everything you need (code and data). If you don't have the skills, you can pay someone else to set it up, as long as you don't become hostage to them.

It's not unlike cars - if you want something reliable and durable, you're better off choosing the less comfortable model for which parts are easily sourced.