Comments on: Episode 4: Battle of the Online Feed Readers

By: TechCrunch » Blog Archive » Newsgator posts roadmap for the future of RSS

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 15:49:19 +0000

[...] Newsgator and Feedburner are the two most active companies in the RSS space right now. When either of these companies say anything, I pay close attention. Yesterday Newsgator founder and CTO Greg Reinacker (listen to an interview with Greg Reinacker and executives from other feed readers on TalkCrunch) posted something that everyone interested in the future of RSS should pay attention to – a big roadmap for the company’s near term future. [...]

By: Chris Saad

Chris Saad — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 05:27:14 +0000

Michael I don’t necessarily agree on the issue you mentioned in the podcast in regards to personal relevancy being less important or even unattractive as a feature (e.g. Findory) as compared to community relevance based on who’s linking to who (e.g. Techmeme or Digg or Rojo).

You are a journalist so you need to catch every article so that you can make editorial decisions about them – but for the average user they want to know what’s important to THEM – not just what the groupthink has voted for.

There was a discussion about it between our blog and Attention trust that is relevant!

http://www.touchstonegadget.com/blog/2006/06/personal-relevancy.html

By: Marshall Kirkpatrick » Asking a lot from my feedreader

Marshall Kirkpatrick » Asking a lot from my feedreader — Wed, 03 May 2006 19:07:12 +0000

[...] I love Newsgator and I’m not shy about saying it. Lately, though, it’s been painfully slow for me. Yesterday I listened to Mike Arrington’s podcast discussion with the heads of 4 online RSS readers, Newsgator included. (Plus Attensa, FeedLounge and Rojo) The show let me know that it’s ok to ask a lot of your feed reader. It’s like a limb to me, so I think I need to explore some alternatives. I had presumed that it was because I’m subscribed to 500 feeds that Newsgator loads so slow on every click. That may be true, but the in depth discussion I listened to yesterday makes me want to reevaluate more alternatives. I want something magically fast. [...]

By: Help Me Help Your RSS Reader!! at Ventureblogalist

Help Me Help Your RSS Reader!! at Ventureblogalist — Tue, 02 May 2006 04:45:15 +0000

[...] I have a confession to make: I have 1800 feeds (blogs) in my RSS/news aggregator, Feeddemon. As pointed out and discussed at length by the CEOs of 5 of the aggregator companies in this podcast, SPEED is the #1 issue for selecting a RSS aggregator. One idea to reduce the lag for desktop readers is to allow users to archive posts in a similar fashion that Outlook enables archiving email messages. I have put this request in with Feedemon, definitely send in your two cents with the company if you are a user and think this is a good idea. Of course, I still have to solve the other problem which is figuring out how to keep up with all these feeds. Quickly bookmark Help Me Help Your RSS Reader!! at [...]

By: Ari

Ari — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 00:39:08 +0000

michael, it’s refreshing to see someone finally confront some of these web 2.0 CEOs

as for the feed reader market…there are a lot of great readers out there, but i have to agree with jeremiah…the next iteration of IE, Outlook, and myYahoo will make it difficult for any of these readers to compete.

i use google’s reader, it appears to be the fastest.

By: flyguy

flyguy — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 17:37:57 +0000

Michael, I love your site and all that it’s doing, but man you were pretty rude on this podcast.

You came across as really condesending and derogatory, which is a shame as you’ve been really objective and balanced in most of the site which is a real plus when reviewing all these new apps and features…

Bloglines is definetly not slow for me at all, and has a simple clean layout. I dont need it to do much more yet. My guess is you probably have a huge amount of feeds? Give it time and I’m sure they will come up with more features.

By: flyguy

flyguy — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 17:37:33 +0000

Michael, I love your site and all that it’s doing, but man you were pretty rude on this podcast.

Bloglines is definetly not slow for meat all, and has a simple clean layout. I dont need it to do much more yet. My guess is you probably have a huge amount of feeds? Give it time and I’m sure they will come up with more features.

By: ITC Server » Blog Archive » NewsGator Accepted Folksonomy Request

ITC Server » Blog Archive » NewsGator Accepted Folksonomy Request — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 16:49:56 +0000

[...] What is NewsGator? NewsGator is one of the online feed (RSS, Atom) readers. When I saw RSS first and found out what RSS is, I thought to upload RSS content to different website. I even wrote a RSS Reader with JavaScript. Simply get the RSS link, render it and show it whereever you want. There are lots of online RSS readers and RSS reader softwares and even Firefox plugins. I have been using My Yahoo recently. I tried the -maybe- most famous online feed reader Bloglines before. Since I read “The State of Online Feed Readers” article by Frank Guber at TechCrunch, I decided to try different feed readers. If you look at comments on this article, you will see that there is a very hot discussion about online feed readers. You even can find a podcast called “Battle of Online Feed Readers” with NewsGator, Attensa, Rojo, and Feedlongue at TalkCrunch. So last week I signed up to NewsGator to try. It is pretty cool! [...]

By: Sido

Sido — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 15:48:38 +0000

Also check out News Alloy (http://newsalloy.com/)! It’s the RSS reader that I use on a daily basis and it really works fine for, but I haven’t really seen it in these discussions…? Why?

Cheers!

By: Jack

Jack — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 12:25:40 +0000

Where’s the new TalkCrunch? I’ve been reduced to listening to the Gillmor Gang.

By: BlogReader

BlogReader — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 04:11:30 +0000

Good podcast, the show’s improving steadily. Good questions. The only complaint I have (and this has been improving) is that with too many people on the call each person steps over one another.

As for your comment of “I did my best to create controversy” Please don’t. This isn’t Jerry Springer.

By: fouldsy.com » Blog Archive » Playing with Gregarius (late at night!)

fouldsy.com » Blog Archive » Playing with Gregarius (late at night!) — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 22:43:36 +0000

[...] There’s been a lot of talk recently about the state of online feed readers, with TechCrunch doing a fairly comprehensive overview, and following it up in their latest podcast on TalkCrunch. I can’t quite get my head around those managing subscriptions to 200-300 blogs, that just seems like information overload and I don’t even know of that many blogs I’d be interested in, so Mozilla Thunderbird has served me well for a year or more now. [...]

By: RSS Reach is Here at The Story of Feedster

RSS Reach is Here at The Story of Feedster — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 21:06:55 +0000

[...] TalkCrunch did a podcast this week about the state of the online feed reader. In the podcast Greg Reinacker of NewsGator said that in last month their usage has grown by 30%. Greg was referring to overall usage of their feed reader services, be it new online users or backend participants using their API, etc. What this growth shows is ways that companies and users are still figuring out the advantages of RSS and how they can use it to their benefit. [...]

By: Shannon Whitley » TalkCrunch - Battle of the Online Feed Readers

Shannon Whitley » TalkCrunch - Battle of the Online Feed Readers — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 02:04:53 +0000

[...] Mike Arrington says that he’s switched to a desktop feed reader after trying the online guys. If your desktop feed reader doesn’t offer an online synching feature, check out Feedlinx. Feedlinx will synch your feeds across multiple machines and different feed readers. [...]

By: Kalim

Kalim — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 00:45:40 +0000

I absolutely loved both Frank’s post and this episode of TalkCrunch. The listeners came in to the discussion well-informed and knowledgable about the features due to Frank’s legwork, and we got to hear some great dialogue and ideas. Listening to all the new features these guys were planning to roll-out and Frank’s statement that he’d conitinue to watch all of these just made me hope that there will be follow-up posts not only to track the new features (which I’m sure TechCrunch will cover anyways,) but also in-depth comparitive reviews of the online feed readers like this in the future, as the players and the features change and evolve.

By: The Roads Less Travelled … » Blog Archive » When will the ONE come …

Wed, 05 Apr 2006 23:49:35 +0000

[...] I generally stick to the software I get used to. For me the difficulty is the initial choice and not the fending off the claims of other products (free or otherwise) once a choice is made. I still use notepad as my primary text editing tool and shifted from IE to Firefox or Outlook to Thunderbird only when I started working on multiple environments after shifting to PI. Though the working on multiple environments did not continue too long I had become besotted with both. However tragically for me I have just spent an hour installing yet another feed reader for reading my feed subscriptions, shifting from the RSS reader which comes with Thunderbird to Omea Reader. Ironically I was in the meanwhile listening to the Talkcrunch’s latest episode on the battle of online feed readers. [...]

By: Greg Reinacker

Greg Reinacker — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 22:41:18 +0000

Huh…I’m certainly not a fanboy. I posted a response to the comment above on my blog:

http://www.rassoc.com/gregr/weblog/archive.aspx?post=807

By: John Pywtorak

John Pywtorak — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 19:24:28 +0000

“Greg Reinacker, Founder and CTO, NewsGator” sounded like a Microsoft fanboy.

To suggest hat IE7 with RSS will be revolutionary and change the web is marketing speak and completely wrong. What about Firefox and other RSS readers? What about iTunes? I think it will have a longer and greater mpact than IE7.

From his discussion I can only come to the conclusion that your service is IE specific and that is the browser you will provide biased support for. I thought of using your service, but now I will not.

By: Vinu

Vinu — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 09:57:45 +0000

We have started a ‘wiki’ for a public RSS aggregator:
http://mytoday.wikispaces.com/

I think I will have to agree ‘Chris’s statement’: “online guys aren’t trying to beat eachother up”

The benefit of syndication especially on the mobile is just market thats going to grow. People have choices and thanks to OPML – trying out new ones will be of now problem.

We plan to launch personalization in our mobile version first soon (by the end of this month)

I need some help in structuring the wiki – so that the entire RSS, feed Reader community can benefit. Suggestions, comments and reviews are welcome. and btw – lovely podcast Mike and Frank amazing review.

By: Jordan Greenaway

Jordan Greenaway — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 22:45:27 +0000

Fantastic episode and keep it up.

Firstly because of the speed issues I don’t use an online RSS reader, instead I use a free desktop app called BlogBridge. However I have tried out all 4 readers that were the center of the show and I’ll say if I was to pick between them I would choose FeedLounge every time. There’s two reasons for this:

1. I find both the speed and accessibility of FeedLounge outweighs any of the other RSS solutions in the show, and as Alex said both the speed of downloading the feed and navigating the software is faster.

2. Secondly I would guess a member of FeedLounge is more valued than a member of any free online reader. A member of say Rojo (not meant personally) is no more than a stat, while a member of FeedLounge is someone they need to keep happy. On top of that, free online readers consist of thousands of inactive accounts (usually used as trials by readers) this isn’t the case with FeedLounge every member (within reason) is an active ‘info junky’ and because of that I’d presume that FeedLounge has a better focus of client communication.

Just my thoughts.

By: Sharif

Sharif — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 20:46:33 +0000

I don’t want my news integrated with my email. Email is already cluttered enough, I consider them two different things. My email checking patterns are not at all consistent with my news reading patterns. I think the main problem with RSS readers is that people link them too much to what they are familiar with, meaning email. RSS is new and different and you need to think about RSS with a fresh mindset. A major problem with RSS is finding feeds you like, since you typically only get exposure to the last 10 or 20 articles. And when you do find some interesting ones, you get bombarded with all the articles the feeds’ publishers wants you to read, rather then the other way around. It makes more sense to limit the syndication at the source, then at the reader.

That’s where new services like feedbite come into play. It’s less of a feed reading service then it is a feed discovery and feed manipulation service. But they play hand in hand. As more users add feeds to their bundles, the archives will grow. So when you come to hunt for new sources, you have some history available to you for searching and filtering.

Community features are still a bit rough, as it is a beta, but if you follow this company over the next few weeks I think you’ll find something worth investing some time. New features are being released weekly. Mixing and matching atom and rss is coming soon.

By: Patrick Keenan

Patrick Keenan — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 20:27:05 +0000

I think you should compare the financial software out there:
blinksale
sidejobtrack
quickbooks onlin

I have found that sidejobtrack is the best out there, even though its free!

By: somefoolwitha.com » I like big RSS..

somefoolwitha.com » I like big RSS.. — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 17:25:19 +0000

[...] Theres a great podcast on TalkCrunch with a discussion between executives on 4 major online feed readers: NewsGator, Attensa, Rojo and Feedlounge. I had a look at a few online feed readers a while ago and I settled on Feedlounge as a good migration from NetNewsWire. In my eyes Feedlounge certainly gives the best user experience: the liberal use of AJAX means no page refresh; none of the other readers seem to do the 3 pane thing or render the pages as well as Feedlounge (Alex mentions that he came from NetNewsWire and I think it shows), its just unfortunate that you have to pay for this usability and that it doesnt yet sync with NetNewsWire, Id really like to see the usability of Feedlounge with the functionality of the NewsGator and NetNewsWire combo (free would be nice too, certainly cheaper). All 4 discuss the future of their respective readers and the future certainly looks rosy, I for one shall be keeping an eye on these an any more which might turn up. [...]

By: anthonyr

anthonyr — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 07:52:29 +0000

Now that was a great episode! I like the fact that you aren’t afraid to disagree Michael.

One question that I was looking to hear answered was ‘were they afraid of google?’

I believe that all of the companies interviewed are dead in the water and that Google is going to ultimately win this race. Why?… I feel RSS readers should be intergrated with email; advantage Google. It’s only a matter of time before they intergrate gmail and google reader. (I just think that their are some utilities that should not be bloated, rss readers being one of them!)

However, the long term winner of the rss reader crown will be the browser; which gives Google the ultimate lead. Although unconfirmed ‘Gbrowser’ is a strong possibility, and if they are able to seamlessly connect all of their services, who can touch them then?…microsoft maybe.

By: Arno Nel on Web Development, Web 2.0 and Sharepoint : On the Web - Day 8

Arno Nel on Web Development, Web 2.0 and Sharepoint : On the Web - Day 8 — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 06:03:22 +0000

[...] Who said Dashboards couldnt be fun Share this post: Email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! Readability Stats: Word Count: 258; Sentence Count: 11; Grade Level: 10.7, more info… FiledUnder: Links, Asp.net, Sharepoint, Web 2.0 [...]

By: Windows Observer » Blog Archive » Online RSS Feed Readers Follow-Up

Windows Observer » Blog Archive » Online RSS Feed Readers Follow-Up — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 02:47:01 +0000

[...] Listen to the discussion. [...]

By: Michael Arrington

Michael Arrington — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 02:33:51 +0000

Hi Paul,

Last week, extensively. I noticed improvement earlier this year, but it has deteriorated again, at least for me.

By: Paul Querna

Paul Querna — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 02:09:58 +0000

Michael,

When was the last time you tried Bloglines and Judged it on Speed? Since the colo-move in December of 2005, Bloglines has been very fast compared to its old speed.

By: Jeremiah Owyang

Jeremiah Owyang — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 01:45:13 +0000

I enjoyed the discussiong around coorperation and growing the larger share of the market. At some point however, users are going to get frustrated with seemingly endless supply of feedreaders.

Normal Humans are lazy and will likely use the path of least resistance, regardless of feature set ability –I’m curious to see what will happen when MS gets more involved with Outlook 12 and full release of the next iteration of IE.

Great podcast — I look forward to these podcasts Mike.

By: TechCrunch » TalkCrunch: Battle of the Online Feed Readers

TechCrunch » TalkCrunch: Battle of the Online Feed Readers — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 01:30:49 +0000

[...] Episode 4 of TalkCrunch is a follow up to Frank Gruber’s popular post last week comparing features and performance of nine of the best online RSS readers. [...]

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 22:13:22 +0000

I am still for Bloglines. I would rather wait a split second more than pay 5 dollars a month, but that’s just me. Bloglines isn’t exactly that slow for me. It loads in 1-2 seconds which is perfectly fine for me.

By: Somewhat Frank

Somewhat Frank — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 21:09:09 +0000

Online Feed Readers Battle on TalkCrunch…

I recently wrote an article for TechCrunch reviewing 9 online feed readers. As a follow-up to the article Mike Arrington of TechCrunch rounded up executives for four of his favorite online feed readers: NewsGator, Attensa, Rojo and FeedLounge for…

By: FeedLounge on TalkCrunch : FeedLounge

FeedLounge on TalkCrunch : FeedLounge — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 20:30:59 +0000

[...] I participated in this week’s TalkCrunch podcast discussion about feed readers. Towards the end I talk a little about some of the things we have coming soon (for those who want a sneak preview). [...]

By: dotnot

dotnot — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 20:29:34 +0000

FeedLounge reviewed…

TechCrunch has a review of 9 online feed readers, and FeedLounge was happy to be included. A follow-up podcast was also published by TalkCrunch, discussed the state of online feed reading with Newsgator, Attensa, Rojo, and FeedLounge.
I wanted to me…