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RSS queries
As many of you know I am anti-RSS but I would like to understand the phenomenon better. So I have a few questions for you. What feature in an RSS reader do you not have but long for? What would cause you to switch from one reader to another? Would you ever consider a reader that forced ads on you, bundled up with the delivered post?
Don't worry, we're not planning or even contemplating changes in our RSS feed, I simply would like to learn.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 26, 2008 at 07:43 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
I use Bloglines' beta version and, with the risk of sounding like bad astroturfing, I wouldn't change anything about it.
I like web-based readers because they're always up to date, by definition, and I hate installing software on my machine other than what's necessary. Also, they mean less traffic.
As for ads, it's a deal breaker for me. I know I can always use a open source, no-frills reader so my participation constraint is really high.
Actually, I don't want "features" in my reader. I just want to be able to track changes in 100+ sites without going bonkers.
Posted by: Gabriel at Jun 26, 2008 7:59:11 AM
I use Google Reader, which is a one-stop web site I can go to. I also typically use at least a couple of different computers, as well as the basic web browser on my phone while I'm waiting in line at, say, the post office, so all the various feeds are centrally managed in terms of read/unread status, etc. That sort of thing would be difficult to achieve with a desktop RSS reader, much less one that runs on different OSes.
One thing I would like in Google Reader would be some way to synthesize the same story that appears on multiple feeds, e.g., the same damn cell phone reviewed in the half-dozen tech blogs I look at.
I wouldn't mind ads appearing in the RSS reader as long as they aren't obnoxiously placed. Google Reader is free, and if they want to generate some revenue by sticking some AdWords in there, that's fine by me.
Posted by: cjc at Jun 26, 2008 8:00:05 AM
The only RSS reader I use is Google Reader, largely because it is 1) web-based (making my bookmarks available everywhere to me) and 2) lets me burn through lots of posts just by using my spacebar (it lets me process content without much bother).
However, it won't replace my browser because I like the visual variety and context of viewing discrete web pages. The monotony of viewing the feed gets dull after a while.
If Google imposed ads in some way, and they were more obtrusive than their current implementation in Gmail, I'd use the service less.
I don't know, for RSS to bust out of its ghetto, I think it needs an app or an interface that parses the content and then presents it in a much more appealing, robust way. I know they tried robotic newsreaders at Ananova a long time ago; that isn't the answer. Who knows.
Posted by: Tim at Jun 26, 2008 8:00:15 AM
I use Google Reader. I use it for most of my online reading. I am subscribed to about four or five blogs, and two newspaper 'round up' blogs that mainly publish picks of the best articles from the web. This way I don't get overloaded with too much to read.
The feature I enjoy the most is the ability to scroll through many articles, starring those that I want to read later, and automatically marking everything else as read.
Having an online reader ties in well with my online habits. I can load the reader, check my email, check out my social networking sites and be done in a few minutes whatever computer I'm on. Then I can get away and do other work.
Some of the articles I read have adverts in the feeds, but I ignore them. If I want to contribute to a blog, then I'll buy a book via their Amazon link.
Posted by: Jamie at Jun 26, 2008 8:04:54 AM
I currently use Google Reader and I can't really think of anything that it's lacking now that I really want. My wife an I frequently use it to share stories with each other and I used to really want them to add a feature where we could annotate those stories with out own comments, but they've recently put that in. I guess I'd also like to see someone implement a way to better tag and save certain articles for latter. Google currently allows you to "star" them, but it's a pretty blunt instrument.
As for ads, I think it depends on their obtrusiveness. A lot of the feeds I read include ads of their own at the bottom. These I don't mind really, especially if it means the difference between them including the whole article in the feed instead of just the first paragraph or two.
Posted by: Matt N at Jun 26, 2008 8:05:38 AM
I currently use Google Reader and I can't really think of anything that it's lacking now that I really want. My wife an I frequently use it to share stories with each other and I used to really want them to add a feature where we could annotate those stories with out own comments, but they've recently put that in. I guess I'd also like to see someone implement a way to better tag and save certain articles for latter. Google currently allows you to "star" them, but it's a pretty blunt instrument.
As for ads, I think it depends on their obtrusiveness. A lot of the feeds I read include ads of their own at the bottom. These I don't mind really, especially if it means the difference between them including the whole article in the feed instead of just the first paragraph or two.
Posted by: Matt N at Jun 26, 2008 8:05:44 AM
I wouldn't have a problem with ads in my RSS Reader. What would be great is if Google Reader, what I use, could sort duplicates out of my list. One article shared by three friends, on two shared feeds and in the original feed will show up six times in my reader. Painful.
Posted by: gautam at Jun 26, 2008 8:08:25 AM
I can't imagine what features of a reader would be so great that I would use one with ads when other ones that don't deliver ads are available.
And regarding your dislike of RSS - as it happens MR has the perfect number of posts per day to justify viewing it every day manually instead of using a reader. Other sources have 50+ posts per day and I don't want to scroll around on those manually (and stuff has rolled off the front page in the meantime) and other sources post very infrequently and I don't want to regularly visit only to find nothing new.
Posted by: jeff at Jun 26, 2008 8:09:38 AM
At various points in the past I have used Newsgator, Bloglines and Google Reader. Google Reader is perfectly fine; Bloglines (BETA!) is adequate; Newsgator is a lost cause.
I still use Bloglines to export my blogroll to my blog, which to my knowledge is a feature no other aggregator provides (except Blogolling .com perhaps). If Google Reader were to offer script-based exporting to a blog, then it would be unstoppable.
Other features that some value but I do not are a browser add-in (i.e., direct subscription via IE/Firefox toolbars) and pre-defined subscription buttons to post on one's own blog.
Posted by: KipEsquire at Jun 26, 2008 8:26:39 AM
I use Google Reader. I am unlikely to switch to another service because Google Reader is a part of my www.google.com/ig homepage, which is very convenient - I see the latest ten entries whenever I open Google, which is all the time.
A possible improvement: When I add a new subcription, Google Reader adds all articles available there at the top of the list (although some are very old), which crowds out other, more recent entries. A minor nuisance.
Another possible improvement: For most websites I monitor, it works just fine. But there's one forum that is inactive most of the time but when someone posts, all 30+ regulars feel compelled to comment on it. I'd appreciate it if I could - just for this particular forum - change the settings so that I'd be notified of the first new post only and another notification would arrive only if I have already clicked on the previous one.
Ads - no problem if they were unobtrusive and safe. By the way, my Avast started screaming when I clicked on the link to this post in my Google Reader. It didn't like the current selection of BlogAds.
Posted by: J. at Jun 26, 2008 8:35:46 AM
I'm very curious to learn why you don't like RSS? I scan over 100 feeds/day and do it quickly thanks to RSS. I've tried many readers but keep coming back to my.yahoo.com.
Posted by: Speedmaster at Jun 26, 2008 8:39:50 AM
I've been using various RSS readers since pretty early on, currently using Google Reader because I like the ability to share articles/view friends' shared articles and quickly email articles from the RSS interface. Tyler, did you know that Google Reader includes MR as a suggested feed under their "Thinkers" bundle? That's how I found you! I believe you were bundled with Language Hat, Freakonomics, and Malcolm Gladwell but I could be wrong.
The only feature I could think of that might be useful (although I'm not dying for it) is to have some sort of option with every article that says "Look for comments feed"--that way if you were really interested in a topic, you could subscribe to the comments and have them appear as a subfolder to the original post. There are a few blogs out there where the discussion is the main attraction; I get around this by waiting a day or two to open the article and then read all the comments that have accumulated, but that way I lose the opportunity to chime in if I have something to add.
Posted by: tina at Jun 26, 2008 8:40:25 AM
2 things:
1) Connecting the dots so that all articles about the same subject in a given time period are grouped together and sorted by some order of worth.
2) Viewing comments for articles I care about without seeing them for those i don't.
Highly subjective and therefore next to impossible to implement. I live or die by my feedreader though, it easily saves me an hour or two a day.
Posted by: Jordan Peacock at Jun 26, 2008 8:45:20 AM
An addition: I was originally unimpressed but then I came to appreciate the RSS technology because I procrastinate much less. As a translator, I am always online. When I was translating a relatively boring text and the deadline was still far enough, I just couldn't discipline myself and keep working without lurking at my favorite websites all the time - what if there's something new? Now that a huge part of my online favorites is in my Google Reader, there's no point in checking again and again. Admittedly, there are still enough attractions to distract me - and I for one never hesitate to take a short break and read something interesting unless I am pressed for time. But I really hated wasting my time by visiting those websites just to find nothing new. My productivity improved. Long live RSS. :)
Posted by: J. at Jun 26, 2008 8:45:27 AM
I use Net News Wire which used be pay but is now free. I prefer the better performance of a native application over something web-based like Google Reader. The best analogy is the difference between Outlook or Mail and webmail. Apps are almost always better, in my view, but web-based sevices offer the portability.
1) A feature I long for: Flash/video capability in NNW's built-in browser (which is otherwise excellent).
2) Something that would cause me to switch: An app that reconceptualized RSS reading in a novel way.
3) Ads: Never. I have a free reader that doesn't do that, why would I accept one that did?
Posted by: Tom at Jun 26, 2008 9:01:34 AM
Google Reader is best for now because (1) it stores my reading history in the internet clouds, and (2) it allows search across the content of all and only the blogs that I read.
The features I'd most like to see are these:
(1) The ability to jump to the comments feed for a given post. Also a way to leave comments without going to the webpage.
(2) Better interaction with other social software, especially bookmarking services like del.icio.us. I do not want to have to visit the post's webpage to save it.
(3) The ability to subscribe to authenticated feeds, like the one for Nature's full content. This is not possible with Google Reader.
(4) Automatic completion of all partial- and summary-content feeds. Business models be damned.
(5) Alternatively, I wish Apple would create an RSS reader that has an iTunes-like store for subcribing to pro blogs and magazines for small fees.
(6) No ads ever; they are bad for the soul.
(7) Links to other blog entries should be followed inside of the reader and be displayed as just another post. I realize that is not what RSS is for, but I don't care.
General idea: Webpages rely too much on the printed-page metaphor, and we need to move beyond that. RSS is not perfect but it correctly emphasizes the primacy of content.
Posted by: Lee Beck at Jun 26, 2008 9:06:40 AM
I use Google Reader. I subscribe to a lot of blogs, with turnover depending on my interests and blog quality, and set a roughly fixed reading time. I scan headlines for 5-10 minutes either skipping, reading short articles, or putting articles that are more substantive or where I want the comments in a background tab.
Features I would like: Statistical scoring at the single article level. The nearest I've seem was gnus scoring for nntp.
Switching feature: Speed of scanning and reading. Google Reader had excellent 100% keyboard driven support and, unlike, bloglines, wasn't buggy.
Feeds with ads: Text would be fine. Anything animated or similarly distracting would be cause for unsubscribing.
Posted by: jonm at Jun 26, 2008 9:07:28 AM
RSS is a truly important technology that helps information find its audience, making the whole information ecosystem more efficient. I'm a Google Reader user, typically using it inside it's own dedicated application using Mozilla Prism. My two top wishes are 1) more control over when feeds refresh, 2) support for authenticated feeds.
I also depend on Yahoo Pipes to let me remix my feeds or scrape pages to generate feeds.
I'm not against ads per se, but I believe that there is A LOT of progress to be made in improving them. Just knowing what content a user finds interesting in a reader is probably an outstanding way to pitch to them. If publishers could opt-in to allow Google to place discreet, well designed (haven't seen that yet), targeted ads and share the revenue, that would be interesting.
Now that I think of it, here's another wish for RSS technology—that Feedburner would magically convert any stylesheets into inline CSS for the feed.
Posted by: Marsh Gardiner at Jun 26, 2008 9:14:42 AM
Google Reader. The only thing I would change is to have some way to mix private and public RSS feeds. I'm not sure that an RSS feed can be secured, but if so, I would like to have Google Reader be able to have private subscriptions.
Posted by: Cobb at Jun 26, 2008 9:15:41 AM
Having just made my first comment on MR (longtime lurker), there are three things I'd recommend to make the commenting more pleasant. 1) support for OpenID, 2) a larger textarea when previewing your comment, and 3) having an extra step for a captcha is clunky.
I'd be remiss if I didn't thank MR for expanding my mind a little bit each day—fantastic stuff.
Posted by: Marsh Gardiner at Jun 26, 2008 9:19:10 AM
I use NetNewsWire and the Newsgator site for RSS.
One feature I would love to have is some 'discovery' mode. RSS is great for plowing through the things I know I want to look at, but lacks the discovery aspect of surfing sites. A reader that could provide more information than simply the body of an article would be exciting. Who is discussing the article, what other sites does this site link to regularly, who disagrees with this article, etc, etc.
In terms of switching readers, I need 1. a native desktop client 2. syncing with an online client 3. a great UI. Any reader which could give me more background/social information along with an article (as described in my 'one feature') could get me to switch, provided it had my other required features, and didn't sacrifice my speed in reading and using the app for the new feature.
As far as ads go, it doesn't bother me as long as it is done tastefully and securely -- no adware or ads that make noise by default (any site that does this gets an immediate close window no matter how good the content).
Posted by: John at Jun 26, 2008 9:26:18 AM
I use Google Reader. I switched to it after being a long-time (relatively) user of Bloglines. I switched because it was easier to organize and share my favorite posts, mostly because of the gmail tie-in.
I would switch away from Google Reader if they made it easy to export and save my shared/starred items into some sort of reasonable storage format. I'd like the options of XML, CSV and clean HTML.
I'm also looking for a Firefox extension that lets me save a PDF of a webpage in one click or by selected area.
The big plus of RSS/ATOM, to me, is that I don't have to see all these different ugly blogs. Very few blogs are aesthetically appealing(see this one for what I mean: http://www.b-list.org/weblog/2008/jun/15/minimal/ ).
Posted by: grant at Jun 26, 2008 9:30:51 AM
Google reader... follow about 150 feeds.
Missing feature: Authenticated feeds (feeds that need a username/password)
Real missing feature: being able to read my mail in the Google Reader interface. The "river of news" style of reading that Google Reader does so well allows me to read an amazing amount of material every day.
Ads: If they are web-based, I'm going to filter them out... like I've done since 1998.
Posted by: Mark Denovich at Jun 26, 2008 9:40:53 AM
Google Reader. They just improved their iGoogle Gadget, but it still doesn't let me sort by, say, blog. And I agree with the masses above -- it's a huge time-saver.
Posted by: Dan Lewis at Jun 26, 2008 9:43:06 AM
I just started using RSS and Google Reader relatively recently, and I very much agree with all the comments about it making scanning lots of headlines much easier.
I don't have any burning feature requirements. I'd like less duplicate headlines from the NYT and more robust tagging. I can't think of a likely scenario that would cause me to change readers since I don't have any known unmet needs or any particular pain points with the current one.
Also, some of the NYT listings already include little text ads. I don't particularly mind, nor do I pay attention to them. I don't care in principle about the ads, as long as I can easily ignore them.
Posted by: Greg at Jun 26, 2008 9:43:50 AM
I want one that learns which blogs I read the stories from and which I don't, and displays them according to their importance, rather than simply chronologically.
Posted by: Bill Mill at Jun 26, 2008 9:53:48 AM
Wow, I don't think that I can add anything that hasn't already been said above.
I use Google Reader. I love it. I can read through a ton of different websites' posts extremely fast. I also use the Google Reader for my Google ig page (personalized Google) so I don't leave Google Reader open all the time.
I subscribe to way too much information to go to every different website. I also have no qualms against going to a website if they give a good enough post where I would want to respond (such as this).
I gave up freakonomics in my reader because they only did half posts after switching to the nytimes or whatever. I know I'm not the only one to drop them too.
I wouldn't mind ads, as long as they unobtrusive (perhaps placed at the bottom of the post, or something along those lines).
What's don't you like about RSS?
Posted by: David Parker at Jun 26, 2008 10:04:29 AM
Like many of the people above, I use Google Reader. Unlike many of the people above, though, I do have some requests for additional features.
Recently they added the "share with note" function which allows you to add comments on posts you share with anyone connected to you through Google reader. This is a step towards creating a social RSS-reader, but it is only a baby step. I want the ability to respond to posts shared with notes. I want threaded responses, or at the very least a Twitter-like "@NAME" system in place so people can see who, and why, I am responding to another note. I want to find people who have similar feeds to me, see their publicly shared notes, and see what feeds they read that I do not.
Basically, I want Google Reader to become social. What is nice about a system like this is that if you don't want it to be social, you can have the same old gReader. If you do want the social aspect, though, this is a HUGE opportunity for Google. I actually cannot believe they haven't jumped on this yet. It is too good of an idea not to take advantage of.
Posted by: Kyle Wegner at Jun 26, 2008 10:19:45 AM
Surprised you don't like rss, as i get the impression you like to dip in and dip out of things quickly. rss makes reading feeds so much more efficient, and consistent keyboard controls lets you mark and save posts on different blogs with ease.
It's true that some blogs have nice designs. It would be nice if blogs could embed "rss skins" that would allow them to show off some of their design skills in Google Reader.
Also would be nice if it was easier for blog writers to count the number of users reading via rss feeds, i don't know if this is possible
Posted by: paul at Jun 26, 2008 10:21:56 AM
I use Sage Too (a firefox plugin). I can't use a web based reader because I also want to follow some feeds that are only served to our intranet. RSS lets me follow a lot more content than I otherwise would, including blogs that are updated infrequently and things that aren't blogs. For example, if you do a search on craigslist, it automatically creates an rss feed for that search. Add that feed to your reader and you have the results of that search show up among the other things you follow every day. So even if there isn't the camera you want to buy up on craigsist today, just wait and it will show up soon enough. Also, I can track changes made to various wikis (mostly internal to my company).
Basically, RSS gives you an easy way to keep track of changes to any body of content: blogs, news sites, wikis, craigslist...anything that publishes an rss feed of recent changes.
As for your fetsh for interacting with the blogs actual page. RSS doesn't keep you from doing that at all. You could still see that your favorite blog has new content and go to the actual blog's page. Blogs that aren't as important to you but are still somewhat interesting, you may only skim the feed before deciding to dive deeper or not.
David
Posted by: david at Jun 26, 2008 10:36:23 AM
@cjc re: synthesizing the same story in blogs/feeds.
It's a convoluted process, but you can always use Yahoo Pipes. Pipes has a feature that gathers a bunch of rss feeds and then you can syphon posts that contain same links, same headline etc. You then turn that pipe into an RSS feed.
Posted by: adsf at Jun 26, 2008 10:39:44 AM
I'm going to guess that you and Fred Wilson don't use RSS for the same reason -- your readers are your RSS!
Like most of the commenters, I use Google Reader. I miss having the context of font and graphics that you get by visiting websites individually -- maybe that feels more like actually visiting? But the visual display of information in uniform font and color makes it much easier to process quickly. And over time, I believe you actually hear the author's voice a little better because you're filtering out the noise of the website. I will admit, however, that at times I've confused you with Alex and vice versa!
I am constantly adding and removing feeds to try to find the optimum, non-redundant mix of news and commentary.
I no longer read major newspapers.
Global Voices Online is the most challenging feed to process mentally: http://globalvoicesonline.org/
Posted by: Michael F. Martin at Jun 26, 2008 10:41:30 AM
Without an RSS reader, I wouldn't have seen this post. With it, MR becomes a daily read. So whatever you do, remember that RSS is the only way/reason you reach some readers. Thus, keep full posts, etc. I use Newsfire, by the way. I appreciate web-based readers, but prefer something that pulls the data down and stores it locally. Find a geek to pump some code in that'd sync up feed status between desktop RSS readers and you'd be onto something.
Posted by: Steve Fairchild at Jun 26, 2008 10:41:53 AM
The ads should be embedded in the feed, not served through the reader. It's your content. I can get a reader that doesn't have ads, but I can't get a MR feed that doesn't. The feed readers can still find ways to make money - Google Reader could use its data to help its customers buy the right ads from you.
Posted by: Nate at Jun 26, 2008 10:43:25 AM
I use Mobile Google Reader on my BlackBerry. I've never liked RSS readers on the desktop, but I LOVE being able to take interstitial time and turn it into web browsing via RSS. The RSS is a great way to focus content instead of fluff onto the small screen. I've found that it reduces the time that I waste websurfing at my computer.
Posted by: Tony at Jun 26, 2008 10:57:38 AM
I use bloglines, and not Google Reader, because the latter (surprisingly) does not allow you to read email subscriptions in the reader.
Posted by: Joe Grossberg at Jun 26, 2008 11:01:48 AM
More than anything else, I'd love to see data mining techniques applied to my feeds so as to filter out redundant articles.
I subscribe to a very large number of RSS feeds (as well as newspapers, magazines, etc.) and inevitably there is overlap. Particularly when an important news story comes out (like finding ice on Mars), everyone blog finds a need to link and comment on that subject, but once I've read one summary (and gone straight to the source), I have no need to see it another dozen times.
Easier said than done of course, but this is what I'd hoped Persai (persai.com) was going to do. Instead, they took the "easy way out" and just recommend more stuff for you to read. As if I had that kind of time.
What is this internet obsession with always adding more data to my life? I want products that synthesize and compact what I'm already aware of, not add new feeds.
Posted by: A-naan-e-mouse at Jun 26, 2008 11:03:33 AM
Google Reader. The only thing I wish it had was some stats on what percentage of feeds I clicked on to go to the actual sites. This would be helpful for partial feeds. I subscribe to so many feeds, this would be a nice indicator of which ones I can get rid of. Right now, it just tells me what percentage I've "read" which includes times that I glance over stories and simply move on to the next ones (in other words, my percentage read is always 100%).
The stats on which stories I star and share are somewhat useful, but mostly because I actually have work related reasons for starring, and blogging reasons for sharing. Otherwise, I really wouldn't have a good idea of which ones I've found most useful.
Posted by: Dave at Jun 26, 2008 11:20:54 AM
If it helps - I began Google Reader as a small project while working at Google (I've recently moved on) and had been working on it as a core developer for the last 3 years and recently I wrote a post about first principles for feed reading I learned during Reader's development. Possibly useful post, but it's probably a little too long.
Regarding ads or monetization-that-might-not-be-ads...I've said publicly that it seems worth exploring whether feed reading apps and sources can somehow help each other - so I'm going to do that weird thing of quoting myself. :) I've said that
"I don't want the enterprise of efficient, elegant syndication on the web to sit on the sidelines while good resources in investigative journalism bleed out. (Seriously, it looks like they're bleeding out.) And the feed reading space is growing rapidly. There has to be a way for all of us in the feed community to help."
And as requested, here's some things that don't currently exist that I'd love to see in feed readers:
- Full feed content for all sources in the world, especially news, and I'd be happy with starting with CNN, New York Times, Reuters.
- Translating content from languages foreign to me.
- A way to create and follow conversations about things I'm reading in the place I'm reading them. (Some services can use Google Reader's shared items to do this e.g FriendFeed)
- A way to follow an aggregation of all current public conversations about things I'm reading.
- Recommendation or filtering of items to me based on implicit and explicit positive signals by people who are reading things similar to me and/or whose opinion I trust.
Things that could be better for every web-based feed reader:
- Faster crawls of feeds, though this is getting better every year.
Things that don't exist in Google Reader I'd love to see given enough time and resources to develop them:
- Filtering content by keywords.
- Access to authenticated feeds.
- Sorting of items or sources by recommendations based on my reading habits. (Do I jump to this source every morning? Ok, in the morning promote that source a bit.)
- Feed normalization. (A difficult problem to solve that would help tremendously with some forms of duplication.)
Slightly off-topic, I read your post about "the demerits of RSS" where you mention that "I also fear that ongoing use of RSS would lead to reading inflation" and, yeah, I can confirm this often happens to people. Thankfully, the trends data within some feed readers which can show you which sources you're not reading combined with the ability to mark whole sources as read and the overall ease of unsubscribing can help to curb inflation. (Couldn't help myself with those last two words. Mea culpa?)
Posted by: Chris Wetherell at Jun 26, 2008 11:27:26 AM
I feel RSS Feeds make your browsing experience very convenient...
I tend to follow a lot of websites and blogs(more than a hundred). It becomes a herculian task if you need to check all of them everyday for updates. RSS Feeds track for updates and update it on the reader. That way you save a lot of time.
I use Google Reader. I can skim through the posts very quickly, Create folders and organise. Sharing it with friends here especially where you can comment makes it easier than mailing the article to friends. Features like "discover" based on what people are subscribing to, on the same topic, and the number of people subscibing to it becomes a good recommender.
I wouldnt like ads here as the interface is already cluttered.
I feel that online readers are better it takes a while to download on to the desktop reader. No, I wouldnt use live bookmarks, they make my browser heavy.
Posted by: Tuna Fish at Jun 26, 2008 11:54:56 AM
Four things I want:
1. Ability to comment while still in a reader
2. Ability to click a link that will open up in the reader, and not in my browser.
3. Ability to print a page in the reader
4. More frequent updating; I find there's about a two hour delay between a blogger posting something and it reaching my Reader
I find Google Reader to be exceptional, and what I consider the edited and slimmed down version of the internet which I receive on the Reader I vastly prefer to the normal internet. Most internet graphics are subpar in comparison to other forms of art, and advertising, even unobtrusive advertising such as Google ads, I find to be annoying and distracting. The New York Times website's advertising comes to mind as one of the most egregious examples of this. Who needs vidoes of some douchebag from ExxonMobil talking about how he's saving the environment?
Moving on, I'm surprised by how negatively Tyler and others view RSS feeds. Every morning, I open my reader up to about 200-300 posts (it used to be more). Because I can manage my subscriptions through Google Reader (I assume other readers allow you to do this) I actually read my blogs one by one, not altogether as a massive conglomeration of 200 posts. I find the pages load much faster than a normal blog, and I love not having to click through to the full page. I can skim much faster, and I can move beyond posts that are boring, offensive, or just not to my liking more easily. My reader simply allows me to read my blogs better and more freely. I also think I'm more likely to click on the links included...
Oh, and if you're shopping for something on CL or Ebay, a reader is indispensable (but keep in mind that 2 hr delay).
Posted by: Andrew at Jun 26, 2008 11:55:55 AM
I use Google Reader and couldn't do without it. Like others have said, I like the always-up-to-date-on-any-platform feature of an online reader.
The biggest thing I feel I miss by using a RSS reader is the unique graphic design and feel of each blog. The default look of Google Reader is great, but I wish there were some way I could select an option for some feeds that would pass on some of the design elements of the blog into the reader--even a background color and font would be nice.
Posted by: Damon at Jun 26, 2008 11:57:14 AM
Feature I would like: I want to be able to read a blog from the beginning at my own pace.
Posted by: bobvis at Jun 26, 2008 12:19:49 PM
For me, the greatest advantage of a tool like Google Reader is the ability to organize and filter feeds, which helps manage the trade-off between reading a wide variety of relevant and interesting information and spending all day on the Internet in my pajamas without leaving the house.
To that end, I sort my RSS feeds by priority. One folder contains my very favorite blogs and a couple daily newspapers. I read almost every post. The next level contains way more blogs and commentary than I could conceivably read, and I generally browse by individual feed, picking and choosing whatever looks interesting. If nothing catches my eye, I have no qualms hitting "Mark all as read" on a feed-by-feed basis. The low priority folder is mostly fun, wacky stuff worth perusing, but I'll usually clear it out completely every day without worrying that I'll miss any of the content. Once in a while, I'll look at the "trends" data and promote or demote feeds from one level to another.
Reading inflation is a very real phenomenon, but RSS readers make it easy to manage. The biggest obstacle is accepting that it's alright not to read absolutely everything posted to every blog on the Web. Once you get past that, however, RSS is a wonderful time saver.
Posted by: ecmendenhall at Jun 26, 2008 12:26:08 PM
I use NetNewsWire on the Mac. For certain blogs & feeds, particularly those in my industry, it's an excellent way to scan the morning news without scrolling through a web page. I can usually tell by the subject line whether I want to read the full post. If so, I just hit enter to open it in my browser. For other blogs, though, -- like this one -- I prefer to go to the web site every few days and meander.
These are two different modes for me - one is a task (make sure I'm informed about work) and the other is entertainment. There is a bit of overlap, but this has worked well for me since I nuked about 300 feeds in my reader two years ago. With that many feeds catching up on RSS started to feel like a job all by itself.
As with food, information has become so abundant that evolution works against us - I have to carefully monitor my diet lest I do things like comment on blog posts during work (i.e. right now).
Posted by: Derek at Jun 26, 2008 12:37:01 PM
I use Google Reader and I would love if it had a vacation setting, that stopped my feeds for a couple days when I am out. I also would like to tag feeds, like I do in my Gmail.
Posted by: BH at Jun 26, 2008 12:41:15 PM
1. What feature in an RSS reader do you not have but long for?
Duplicate detection. I don't want to see the same story more than once. I may want to see varying commentary on the same issue (for example, several different economics blogs writing about a Fed rate cut), but I don't want to see the exact same headline reblogged six times, as often happens.
2. What would cause you to switch from one reader to another?
In the past, performance has been the main motivator for me to switch. Many RSS readers get creaky after a hundred or so feeds, particularly desktop applications. My current reader, Google Reader, doesn't suffer from this issue.
3. Would you ever consider a reader that forced ads on you, bundled up with the delivered post?
It's moot. I filter ads in my browser, so I'd never see them. I generally shy away from heavily ad-burdened sites and applications, though.
Posted by: Alex Payne at Jun 26, 2008 12:43:50 PM
I have to go with the others and say that improvements to the way one leaves/reads comments would be nice. I would also like it if there were some position in-between read and unread. Sometimes you read a post at the very beginning of a comment conversation, and you will need to go back later to see how it develops. Marking it unread is aesthetically unpleasing due to its inaccuracy, and I use the other marking tool for something else.
Posted by: Mario at Jun 26, 2008 12:58:20 PM
Oh man. RSS changed the way I use the internet. I am less likely to use sites that don't have an RSS feed because I will only sporadically remember to go back and check them, and when I do check them I have already missed the good comment thread or the upcoming event I would have liked. I'm kind of astonished that someone with your reading habits hasn't adopted it!
RSS makes it much easier for me to read what I'm in the mood for and sort out what I don't. I use Google Reader because it's web-based and I can use it anywhere. It makes my procrastination more efficient -- no constant checking back to see if there is a new MR post; I know if it's updated or not. It makes it easier to follow sites that update very infrequently; I don't have to keep checking back and wonder if the blogger has given up because I'll get a new post when it comes. I can tackle the firehose of a high-volume, low-content blog in bursts and remember where I left off more easily -- or simply ask for all posts that mention a given topic and never touch the rest.
I'd like to be able to thwart receiving partial feeds without installing special add-ons to do it -- and yes, I'm annoyed when you post something that has a jump, especially because I'm not always expecting it. I really enjoy Language Log and Freakonomics and yet I read them much less often that I do other sites simply because I have to click through to read full posts. Perhaps counterintuitively, I visit the sites that offer full feeds more often, because if the post is good I want to see the comments too. I don't care much about site design and for that matter if a site is too flashy and high-design I'd rather just read it stripped-down.
I'd like to be able to subscribe to a feed of comments on an individual post without leaving my reader, especially if I read the post before anyone else has commented. (But I don't want this badly enough that I've figured out if there is already a way to do this or not.) For that matter I'd like all blogs to offer comment feeds!
I'd like to get announcements of events/time-sensitive items marked differently than regular content posts so I can sort them into their own folder, by date -- especially since I subscribe to several feeds that are mixed news items and event postings. A blog I only read every once in a while may still announce something time-sensitive I am interested in.
Ads don't bother me much; I often don't even notice them.
I'd be more of a fan of Google Reader if it were a little less slow. If it weren't web-based I'd be using an open source reader with a little more customizability to tweak little interface and preference things. Another web-based reader that offered a little more customizability without losing my favorite features would probably have me, but I'd have to stumble across it since I'm not actively looking...
Posted by: Kat at Jun 26, 2008 12:58:23 PM
I'm a dedicated RSS user. My biggest complaint: links to individual entries showing up as links to the Feedburner redirect, which then requires me to open up the page to get the actual URL -- and thereby negating one of the benefits of using a feed reader.
Posted by: Jacob at Jun 26, 2008 1:28:24 PM
I use Google Reader, which I like a lot for the fact that it lets me discover new feeds related to my interests fairly easily. One thing I always missed in an RSS reader was a "ticker" - something that would scroll across my screen with constantly updated feed info. I found what I was looking for in an Adobe AIR-based app called Snackr. Does most of what I really want. Feeds scroll by at a user-variable speed with just enough info to let me decide if it is interesting enough to warrant my attention. I can ignore it or even minimize it when I don't want the distraction. When I click on an article in the scroller, it pops the article (or a summary depending on the feed settings) up in it's own floating window (not a browser window, and I can decide if I want to click through to the website itself. One thing I wish it did that it doesn't do is let me grab and scroll backward if an article slides past before I have a chance to check it out. Take a look at http://www.snackr.net if you want to try it out. I'm not affiliated, just a happy user.
Posted by: Andrew at Jun 26, 2008 1:51:14 PM
I was also not a fan of RSS for much the same reasons as you. When I read, I want to read specific websites, not just have everything new that I have some interest in thrust in my face. I didn't use RSS until Safari on OS X included an RSS reader which is perfect for me. Rather than aggregating many feeds into one, one simply bookmarks an RSS feed and adds it to the bookmarks bar. A little number appears next to it when that specific website updates, clicking it takes you to that website's RSS page, and only that website's RSS page. There is no aggregation, only update notification, which is exactly the way I like it.
Posted by: Mike at Jun 26, 2008 1:59:50 PM
I use Bloglines (non-beta) and watch 208 feeds, although only about 80 daily (I've organized my feeds into Daily, Frequently, Infrequently, and Rarely folders and crack open folders according to how much time I have).
Feature requests: Better (or any) support for authenticated feeds in web-based readers. Currently only client-side readers support authentication to any reasonable degree, which completely precludes private feeds from being used in my main reader. Causing a switch: A reader that could support my feature request as well as be much smarter about filtering content based on what I'm interested in. Both collaborative filtering and more individualized content recommendation are basically commodity algorithms at this point, and there's no point a reader couldn't (especially given explicit feedback from me in the form of upvoting or rating content) figure out which topics interest me more to a high degree of accuracy. I'd start with pseudo-Bayesian categorization.
Ads: Why should the reader insert the ads? Ads can come in feeds, and they probably should, since this gives the content creator more control over which advertising accompanies their product.
Posted by: sidereal at Jun 26, 2008 2:00:12 PM
I want to add another vote for duplicate post removal.
The people looking for keyword filtering on their feed can try
http://www.feedrinse.com/
Its neat and I have non connection to the company.
Posted by: Chris L at Jun 26, 2008 2:07:42 PM
I like Chris Wetherell's point about the role non-ad-monetized RSS could play in saving good journalism. Let's HBO-ize / iTune-ize the magazine, newspaper, and blogger businesses.
Why can't I read Entertainment Weekly or fancy-pants magazines in my RSS reader? I have money; they have content. Instead they are selling some sort of paper-and-staples product that I don't have time for.
I'm grumpy because no one will take my money in exchange for more Wilkinson-quality philosophical interviews and Yglesias-quality political commentary.
Markets in everything, please.
Posted by: Lee Beck at Jun 26, 2008 2:11:26 PM
I use the built-in reader in Opera (although I normaly browse in Firefox). The primary reason is that it is superfast. Everything can be done with a few keystrokes, and the responsiveness is a key issue for me. Google Reader is fancier and has more functions, but the clicking just costed me too much time.
Posted by: pinus at Jun 26, 2008 2:25:40 PM
Google Reader is a perfect RSS application.
The only advertising I can accept is the one actually written into the story.
Posted by: Tim at Jun 26, 2008 2:44:07 PM
I switched from bloglines to google reader a while back because GReader marked items as read as I read them, not in huge batches.
One thing that bloglines did better was in handling and sharing your OPML - basically your blogroll. I'd amplify Chris Wetherall's comment about being able to get information from folks that I respect and trust.
I'd really like to be able to subscribe to OPML folders. So instead of tracking everything about economics myself, I might subscribe to a subsection of your blogroll. As you find new resources that you think are worth reading, I can piggyback off of your discoveries. Research groups might be able to use a shared OPML file, etc.
I subscribe to a little more than 200 feeds, which I prune regularly. RSS is a godsend.
Posted by: Matt Katz at Jun 26, 2008 2:53:25 PM
Google reader and I WANT KEY WORD FILTERING too, I mean it.
Posted by: Glassia at Jun 26, 2008 3:00:58 PM
I use google reader, and I subscribe to about 120 feeds. Most of these feeds post less than once a week and are devoted to mathematics or computer science. I like RSS because it lets me keep up to date with infrequently updated by high quality blogs. (I find that the highest quality academic blogs usually update infrequently, though there are plenty of infrequently updated crappy blogs.)
I would like the ability to easily rate posts by whether or not I read them and got something interesting out of them. For example, I usually use the 'j' hotkey to scan to the next post, so 'h' could mean "not very good". This would let me eliminate blogs with lots of low quality posts. Perhaps there could also be some kind of Bayesian filter like those commonly used for spam that could try to guess whether a post would be interesting to me. (For example, I subscribe to a number of food blogs, and I find that restaurant reviews for cities I don't live in to be depressing (since I couldn't afford most of them!), but I like many of the recipes on them. I think a Bayesian filter could easily filter out most restaurant reviews, with few false negatives. Similarly video game reviews on Ars Technica, etc.)
Posted by: Lucas at Jun 26, 2008 3:16:23 PM
Currently use Google Reader; used to use NetNewsWire.
There're two things from NNW that I miss in Google Reader:
- Being able to press a key and have the current article open up in a new window (or tab) behind the current window, so what I'm doing at the moment isn't interrupted.
- NetNewsWire lets you see updated posts in feeds, so if updates happen to posts, they'll be marked as new again. Further, there's an option for the changes to be marked for you so you can see what bits have changed.
Posted by: Nathan Sharfi at Jun 26, 2008 4:34:42 PM
Speed is the biggest feature for me. I want to be able to get through a lot of articles and I don't want to be waiting for the reader to load the next article. I just want to read, hit next then read the next one.
Posted by: Colin at Jun 26, 2008 6:10:28 PM
I have been slow to convert to RSS, but I'm using it consistently now. I use Google Reader, and the only thing I miss is instant access to comments. On my own feed, readers can see the number of comments on the post, and subscribe to the comments feed separately. It's a clunky solution. As a blogger, I also wish there were accurate ways to gauge RSS traffic.
I read a lot of blogs on my iPod touch, and Google Reader has a solid interface for the smaller screen. I also like being able to read the same blogs as frequently or infrequently as I like, without having to constantly click back and find no new entries, or scroll down and remember where I left off.
The trick is to see your 'unread items' number as a variety of attractive options, instead of a very long to-do list. Otherwise it gets overwhelming. Don't worry about getting it down to zero.
I think RSS is a real lifesaver for single-writer amateur blogs. It's not worth clicking over to my site every few hours - sometimes I go a week without a post. If I know that my readers are automatically notified via RSS when I've written something, there's less pressure to pump out low-quality, high-volume material.
Posted by: Allison at Jun 26, 2008 7:08:38 PM
I use Google Reader. The lack of ability to view comments and add to comments is by far the most frustrating aspect of GR.
Posted by: Niall at Jun 26, 2008 8:01:19 PM
I use google reader, and I subscribe to about 120 feeds. Most of these feeds post less than once a week and are devoted to mathematics or computer science. I like RSS because it lets me keep up to date with infrequently updated by high quality blogs. (I find that the highest quality academic blogs usually update infrequently, though there are plenty of infrequently updated crappy blogs.)
I would like the ability to easily rate posts by whether or not I read them and got something interesting out of them. For example, I usually use the 'j' hotkey to scan to the next post, so 'h' could mean "not very good". This would let me eliminate blogs with lots of low quality posts. Perhaps there could also be some kind of Bayesian filter like those commonly used for spam that could try to guess whether a post would be interesting to me. (For example, I subscribe to a number of food blogs, and I find that restaurant reviews for cities I don't live in to be depressing (since I couldn't afford most of them!), but I like many of the recipes on them. I think a Bayesian filter could easily filter out most restaurant reviews, with few false negatives. Similarly video game reviews on Ars Technica, etc.)
Posted by: Lucas at Jun 26, 2008 9:25:55 PM
Google Reader
I'm unlikely to stick with a blog if I actually have to visit the website. so I want to see the entire content in the post and avoidence of annoying phrases like "more below the fold" or "after the jump." Besides the hassle of visiting the site, I find many blog templates are unreadable (layout, fonts, colours).
When I learn of a blog with potential, I automatically add it to my reader... and it gets killed if the content doesn't deliver. This is an easy way for me to put blogs on probation. I've found that only about half of the blogs I've added stay in my reader for more than a few months. Yours has, of course, been a keeper.
Reader wishlist:
1. ability to comment in the reader
2. a vacation setting to turn the firehose off for periods of time
3. more levels of folders to organise my gazillion feeds
4. ability to mark a post unread at any time
5. ability to rate posts and/or have more icon options besides the one gold star (as has been introduced for gmail)
6. ability to print
Posted by: Robin at Jun 26, 2008 9:52:54 PM
I use Bloglines and like it a lot - given some time I could think of a lot of narrow features that would rarely be used.
Two of those off the top of my head would be to read comment threads from the RSS feed. This is a little different than most RSS enabled comment feeds as it would be directly linked to the original post.
Second would be an aggregation of responses and links to the post - think of Technorati + Facebook + digg all rolled into one and accessible as part of the feed itself.
Posted by: Chris at Jun 26, 2008 10:41:40 PM
J.: "I am unlikely to switch to another service because Google Reader is a part of my www.google.com/ig homepage"
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU I HAD NO IDEA GOOGLE HOMEPAGE EXISTED YOU HAVE COMPLETELY CHANGED MY LIFE
Posted by: Jacqueline at Jun 27, 2008 12:17:24 AM
I would rather read the articles on the site's page than in the reader (especially if the reader only shows a blurb) and extra click-throughs annoy me, so I hacked up my own little RSS reader that shows the headlines in one frame and loads the articles in the main frame. I wish there were another reader that did this, but there isn't.
Posted by: Mike at Jun 27, 2008 1:25:27 AM
I love google reader. I tried a couple of feed readers before it--Sage is the only one I remember. But I didn't start using RSS at all until I discovered how great Google Reader is. I like that it's seamless in my browser and I can access anywhere. I like how much control I have over how the feeds are presented to me: it can display all recent posts from my aggregated feeds, it can display all posts from feeds that I've put in a particular folder--and one feed can go in multiple folders, which is essential to my style of organizing information, I like how I can look at a huge list of headlines at once to scan for interesting-looking ones, or I can display the post bodies and skim them.
I also really like the "shared item" feature, but wish I had more control over presentation. The recent addition of the ability to add my own comments was very welcome, as something I'd been wishing I could do from the beginning. I also now have a few overall themes to choose from when people view my shared items.
The starred items, another feature I'd grown to love in gmail, is handy for posts I want to come back to quickly but don't seem of general interest. I also like the ability to scroll through a huge number of old posts. It's useful for going through a large archive on a blog I've just found.
What I'd like most added to Google Reader is some kind of "will read later" marker. For a large proportion of feeds I subscribe to, I never read all the posts, I just read the interesting-looking ones and then hit "mark all as read" (another gr feature I like a lot, I use this for news feeds, high-volume blogs, recipe/instructional blogs, etc), but sometimes there are posts that look interesting, but I don't have the time or inclination to read them immediately. I'd like to be able to mark these for later, then hit "mark all as read" and have those particular "later" posts left unread. I could probably use the star to mark these posts and come back to them later, but it already has a well-defined use for me and I don't like messing with that. Allowing user-defined tags for posts across feeds, not just feed-level labels, might be a useful generalization.
What currently annoys me the most about google reader is that dealing with any post that displays wider than its alloted space in my browser window is extremely cumbersome, but I never used any other readers long enough to learn how they compare.
Right now a couple of blogs I subscribe to append small text ads to the end of their posts, and I don't mind them. Forcing me to sit through any more obtrusive ads would almost certainly be a deal-breaker, depending on just how obtrusive. more google-style text ads would be fine, small (non-animated, no sound) image ads at the end of posts are also ok, dieselsweeties already does this with project wonderful and I don't mind.
I think as feed syndication matures as a technology (and it surely has a long way to go) we will see more ability for individualized displays of specific feeds, either on the part of the reader or the feed provider, or perhaps both. Creating a reader that allows user-defined styles is probably going to happen long before someone comes up with "css for rss" and then gets everyone else to adopt it.
I think that content aggregation as a general trend is very much the future of internet use.
Sometimes I think the only reason I'm studying human-computer interaction is to justify the amount of time I spend thinking about stuff like this anyway.
Posted by: ielerol at Jun 27, 2008 5:45:45 AM
Nobody using netvibes? It is the best rss reader for now, I find it much more powerful, fast, secure than google reader...
Posted by: Markss at Jun 27, 2008 6:29:06 AM
For blogs I check daily or several times a day I use Apple Mail, for blogs I check less often Google Reader. It's like snacks and cocktails vs. meals and wine.
Posted by: Hans Suter at Jun 28, 2008 5:47:59 AM
as a user of google reader for all the reasons i managed to read above, there is one idea i would like to see incorporated: a mashup of a google search + RSS feed. i want to be able to follow certains news events or topics via reader without having to go perform the onerous task of clicking too many things. wasn't that the original idea behind agents?
Posted by: unacoder at Jun 28, 2008 10:50:23 AM
Google Reader. I only wish the feeds would look more like the original blog pages. There is a lot around the article that we feed-reader readers miss out on. But the convenience of a feed-reader can hardly be argued.
> Don't worry, we're not planning or even contemplating changes in our RSS feed, I simply would like to learn.
You make this statement with the assumption that change would be worrisome. :-)
Posted by: Umang at Jun 29, 2008 12:21:43 AM
The best thing about RSS, and the Web in general, is that each viewer controls its appearance and "features". Thus any forced-ad-display scheme would be unlikely to work for very long. People put up with ads from Google, Yahoo, and Mapquest because of those sites' usefulness in other ways, but even their ads are pretty easy to ignore on most popular browsers.
About the worst thing that could happen to your feed, in my estimation, would be to have it download so much material that it takes 5+ minutes for a page to come up via dialup (example: http://crimlaw.blogspot.com/ ). If that ever happens, each of us has to reevaluate the cost/benefit of viewing that site, and for most dialup users there are few or no sites that would be worth the wait. May it not happen.
Posted by: John David Galt at Jun 29, 2008 2:24:58 PM
I have been using Google Reader for about a week. (I've been an iGoogle user since they made it available--I had been keeping the Google site as my home page, and one day it said, "Customise this page.")
I started using the reader because it lets me see at a glance (or at an extended gaze) what's going on in different worlds: tech, politics, mainstream news, independent news, blogs, etc. I'm still trying to organize and select the feeds that consistently offer value. At the moment I have too many feeds coming in to keep up with. But the Google Reader interface allows me to compartmentalize topics and sites.
One feature I've seen mentioned that I'd like is the ability to not see the same story posted at 20 different places: new iPhone! new Law! Uh yeah, been there already. :)
Posted by: Bob at Jun 29, 2008 6:17:04 PM
I use Google reader.
I would like to have an option to read only 2-3 lines, even when the blog provides full feeds.
Posted by: hyokon at Jul 1, 2008 7:52:02 AM
I use Google Reader. I don't have a problem with targeted ads... as long as the targeting is good enough.
If there's one thing I could change, I'd change it so that incomplete RSS feeds could be converted to full feeds independent of how they were published. I find it really frustrating to read "intro" RSS feeds.
Posted by: mjh at Jul 1, 2008 9:09:30 AM
