From GigaOM: Has the world has changed so much that don’t really need something like Google Reader. Is it time to think about something else, something brand new. Something that is more in sync with a world where information flows through the social webs and is consumed on devices in our pockets. Something like Prismatic, perhaps? Something that automagically surfaces what we want or what we should want to read. Continue reading my thoughts following a conversation with Chris Wetherell, creator of Google Reader.
5 thoughts on “Beyond Google Reader”
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I think Google Reader is a great product I use every day……..1 of Google’s 3 or 4 BEST programs……and that this was a crappy move by Google….and a wrong move. Google spends millions of wasted dollars on pet projects, then kills one of their best products on a whim…………..they act like children sometimes………..
Tools like Prismatic are fine but not for the kind of heavy feed processing I need. Reeder says they’ll continue to deliver after Reader disappears, but I’m skeptical. Whether on borrowed time or not, this is the kind of move that erodes trust in Google. Once again (e.g., Buzz, Wave) we learn the lesson that with Google, anything other than Search (read: Glass, Mail, Drive) could be vulnerable at any time. Proceed accordingly.
> never went past the experimental phase and no was iterating on the business model
Is that a typo, or weird syntax?
I just don’t understand the desire for having machines decide for us what we want to read. It’s like trying to predict what kind of ice cream I will like. I don’t know until after I’ve had it. Ditto for content.
Om, other social protocols/mechanisms push content, but in a very intrusive manner. Any deep work one needs to accomplish, is being constantly hammered with interruptions. work output and quality suffer research shows. RSS readers, allow one to subscribe to favorites and read when temporally appropriate. Email used to be a substitute for live/phone, where the user could pick up mails later. Now IM, SMS/push notifications, mobile, email, phone, UC, all compete for attention, all the time, a mash-up of undisciplined excess.
Anecdotes: I note scoble barely blogs these days,
my favorite bloggers, still produce much higher quality content.
I like to visualize a ‘content curation’ quality axis or horizon. Much of today’s content is duplicate, trivial, low quality, noise, A blogger like yourself, invests in what they write, their curated content is of much higher quality and more valuable. Doc Searls VRM concept dovetails with this notion, that users, will begin to wrest control from ‘providers’ on what, when and how they see what the ‘end user’ desires. RSS readers are/were an important strategic asset here.. trailblazing, push but enabling a user defined pull. it seems like we need new tools, new UC capabilities, that permit deep work, that permit true personalization and filter out ‘the noise’. I’ll continue use RSS until i find/develop a more integrated tool.
thank you Chris Wetherell, ‘the creator’ your work has saved me many hours