Why I Continue to Use Google Reader | Hacker News Reader

Why I Continue to Use Google Reader

siliconangle.net

31 pointsrizzn28 comments

So basically Scoble doesn't like Google Reader because it isn't Twitter.

Personally I really want "social networking features" to stay the heck out of my RSS reader, so I find his critique of that feature to be meaningless.

I'm a big Reader fan because it allows me to visit one site daily to read 50 occasionally updated blogs rather than visit 50 sites daily.

But if all those people used twitter, you'd just have to check twitter hourly. That's half as many checks as 50 sites daily.

Does Scoble take into account that he is an edge case when he writes these things, or not? (Honest question) I get the sense that whenever he writes or complains about things he writes as though other people have the same problems he does. This is at best naive, at worst dishonest if so.

I don't think this even matters to him since it seems like his greatest interest is self-promotion, not the-average-person promotion.

I too, continue to use Google Reader, even though I've been lamenting its deficiencies for more than two years.

I go into more detail in these posts [http://blog.trevorbramble.com/past/tags/googlereader] where I try to glue together Reader and Yahoo Pipes because Reader can't do even basic de-duplication.

Despite my gripes about it, it's the best available. (Though I'm sure their lack of improvements has a lot to do with that fact.)

Yes yes, I'm an avid GR user too and I can't believe how slowly it evolves.

There's a lack of keywords feed filtering, feeds personalisation, items expiration, some way to archive items for later and on and on...

My guess is that it's a very small team working on Google Reader and that they have the wrong priorities : the social stuff, at least it is for me.

I really should revive the Sluice project. Keyword filtering and setting aside items are two of the most concrete intended features (alongside de-duplication and same-link post stacking).

I have to admit I was interested in exploring the social side with my app as well, so I'm glad Google made that mistake before I did. =^)

I just want a way to manage my river of news so that the can't-miss items aren't missed, and the always-skip items are skipped, and above all I should never be blithely offered the same exact link with the same exact metadata more than once. Everything beyond that is negotiable.

Both Scoble's post and this rebuttal really boil down to one thing: different people have different information consumption needs. What suits a power blogger might not suit a social-consumption junkie.

Me? I used to be a blogger, reading RSS feeds for 2-4 hours a day (depending how quickly I found interesting things to write about, and whether it was a catch-up day). I honestly cannot imagine replicating that level of information wired-ness with a simple Twitter list. However! I'm now far more casual in my news consumption and Twitter lists are the perfect way for me to get a handful of headlines from a handful of folks I trust.

I haven't even set up a Twitter list just yet - only a custom group in TweetDeck. I manually visit four or five sites when I get the time, and get my news that way. I even set up these sites in Google Reader, but it's not all that efficient when you've only got a handful - I actually prefer to visit the sites themselves, as I can see things like Lifehacker's recommended stories more easily there. HN is the main place I go to for news outwith these sources.

A main reason I plan to stay with Google is the ability to avoid visiting sites themselves unless I want to participate. For some reason constantly leaving and returning for information is not conducive for optimal consumption. Different information consumption needs indeed.

I personally stopped using Greader, not because it's a bas tool. It's a great tool, but I stopped using it after realizing that google knew everything about me, and that I was totally dependant on them. So now I use tt-rss, it's a Greader clone (just better) that I host on my box. And I'm now Google-free :)

I've always felt that Google was a benevolent overlord. That may change at some point, and at that point I'll leave. Until then, I'm ok with being dependent on them for almost everything.

Until you try to leave and realize you're just too dependent on them. They pull you in by inches, and then you realize you're miles from getting out.

I actually love most Google products, and I'm willing to deal with them for now. I just wanted to provide the counter argument.

You're always free to take your ball and go home though: http://www.dataliberation.org/

I'm a huge fan of those guys. Even though I may never move my data out of Google, at least I know I always have the option.

I get that. It's always difficult to migrate data, no matter how easy it has been made to move.

Google Reader is my starting point to follow everything that's on topic. There is absolutely nothing out there that comes close. Twitter is not for full feeds, period.

Is there a better online RSS reader than Google Reader?

I've been considering Fever (http://feedafever.com/) but it's tough to know how well it will fit my needs without a demo, or at the very least a refund policy.

I like using Google Reader on the iPhone, it works better than any of the dedicated apps I've tried and I don't have to reconfigure a new app with my list of feeds.

I also don't think Twitter is ever going to replace RSS feeds. RSS covers in-depth information from sources that I follow while twitter may occasionally direct me to the same sources that isn't its primary use.

From Scoble post about GReader: >> 3. It makes me feel guilty. I have 1,000 unread items. Twitter doesn’t tell me that.

Actually, I happen to agree with this point. The feed reader tracks what is read and what is unread, and that can develop into a unhealthy habit to check "what is new" and try to "clear the feeds" from unread items several times per day.

Recently, my experience is that GReader (or any feed reader in general) tends to consume quite a lot of time, even too much time. So like Scoble, I am also looking for a better solution, which might include twitter (but twitter lists isn't it for me).

That's why I always go with different categories - I track an unusually large number of feeds, so not everything is of equal importance every day. On slow news days, though, I make my way down the categories I have organized in order of priority.

I intentionally subscribe to more feeds than I need so I'm never without, but don't feel guilty about not reading them all.

Is there an aging mechanism whereby the application can automatically ignore posts that are n-days old, or with less than n-number of "like" hits?

Reason I ask is that I've just started using greeder. I tend to also get ovsessive-compulsive about making sure everything's read and ticked, so i can definitely see this as becomming a problem.

Not that I'm aware of.

They're doing some funky stuff with that Auto-sort and Magic options, but I don't think they do what you say.

I HATED having unread items in GReader, but didn't have the time to read them. I finally forced myself to tier everything.

One folder with a maximum of 10 feeds that were un-missable for me. A second folder with a maximum of 20 feeds that were important, but not as critical (or with a lower signal-to-noise ratio) as the first one. And so on...

The results?

I'm still seeing and reading everything important (since it's in my top folder)

As I have time I can clear more and more stuff through each successive tier of folders.

When I feel like I need a little serendipity, I just click "All Items" and just see what's new, whether it's from a top-tier folder or bottom-tier folder.

I'm back to loving GReader and RSS now... :)

What I need in a reader (I haven't found it) is the ability to say: this list of subjects is what I want to read about. Period. I don't want to be the filter. In an always-on reader, I want fine-grained tunable filters. Source level isn't good enough: it has to be at the post level. Or better.

Sometimes I want to drink from the firehose. Then I run to an accumulator like popurls.com. But life's too short to be scrolling for a half hour. As for socializing: I do that at the club.

You want Uncov's product Persai. Or whatever he ended up calling it.

It pretty much did that.

The iPhone version of Reader is very annoying because it refreshes the page constantly when I come back to it. Thus I lose the place or folder where I was at.

The iPhone (and Android) will unload Reader (i.e. the state of the DOM/page) when memory gets tight (when the browser is running in the background, or when visiting a resource-intensive page in another tab). As devices get more memory (e.g., 3GS is better at this than first-gen) things will get better.

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