Comment on "Feed Readers Are a Commodity -- If Not Now, then Soon."

Martin Dittus — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 06:27:46 GMT

Before I forget: It's not just about Google either. There's NewsGator, Bloglines, probably a couple more. And I expect the number of such aggregator services to grow quite a bit.

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Comment on "Feed Readers Are a Commodity -- If Not Now, then Soon."

Martin Dittus — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 00:25:07 GMT

You may be right -- but my point was that we now can use Google Reader as _backend_ for our own custom UIs. Google will do the aggregation, and the presentation layer can be custom software by a third-party programmer.

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Comment on "Feed Readers Are a Commodity -- If Not Now, then Soon."

Robert Brook — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 00:18:14 GMT

Well, presently Google Reader simply isn't good enough. Slow, a heavy interface, clunky interactions.

Hey, I *use* the google Reader mobile UI - and I'm starting to look back at Ruby again...!

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Feed Readers Are a Commodity -- If Not Now, then Soon.

Martin Dittus — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 02:09:55 GMT

While reading this:

Google built a feed platform that is freely available for any user with a Google account.

... and re-reading this:

The data technologies powering Google Reader can easily be used and extended by third-party feed aggregators for use in their own applications.

... it struck me:

centralized aggregation, decentralized delivery and UI
the hardest part in a reader (IMHO) is aggregation, because it offers a lot of pitfalls with little reward for making it "just work"
more interesting: the visible stuff
solves bandwidth issues for everybody
solves stability issues for everybody
saves costs for the developer/hoster (these kinds of applications are way more resource intensive than the typical blog software)

Note that this is completely in line with the software industry's current trend:

there is no money to be made in basic infrastructure: someone already does it better, and for free
now every web developer can create their own feed reader within an afternoon.
which of course means (repeat after me:) software is a commodity.

To each his own

Custom software is where it's at. The small projects developed with minimum effort, for a small set of uses or users, possibly active for only a limited time until you don't need it any more, or until something better comes along.

Which also means it's important to make migration between software solutions painless. Say, as painless as exporting and then importing an OPML file.

Or, say, as painless as simply logging in.

Because when the underlying infrastructure for all those little feed readers is provided by Google there is no need to migrate any data.

(And, of course, this all also ties us closer to the data monster.)

Now I'm seriously considering scrapping the little work I did on a Ruby feed aggregation infrastructure. There's cooler stuff to do than thinking up flow charts of HTTP error states.

Or is there?

Hm.

dekstop weblog : Feed Readers Are a Commodity -- If Not Now, then Soon.

Comment on "Feed Readers Are a Commodity -- If Not Now, then Soon."

Comment on "Feed Readers Are a Commodity -- If Not Now, then Soon."

Comment on "Feed Readers Are a Commodity -- If Not Now, then Soon."

Feed Readers Are a Commodity -- If Not Now, then Soon.

To each his own

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