I loved RSS for a while, and my client of choice was Google Reader. It solved aggregation of the articles, feeds implicitly have inherent notification, and the standardization of presentation elements bring calm to the consumer experience.
RSS has its flaws, some like the non uniformity of discovery were starting to standardize through customs, others, like the scaling and maintaining being left up to the individual while arguably a strength were at the time poorly supported.
When Google Reader disappeared there were few other quality readers polished enough to take over. Many offers tried to rush into the vacuum, some by revigorating their development, others by rushing out a Google Reader clone, but for the most part people did not follow because (a) alternatives were less slick and (b) for many the required housekeeping they had neglected for too long meant their overall feed file had accumulated so much cruft that they didn't want to reboot the effort.
I still do not know exactly why Reader which was extremely successful at the time was given the boot. I can imagine less add engagement, and also we were supposed to transition to Wave or G+ or was it still Orkut at the time?
Anyway, for the internet masses server side aggregation won, client side aggregation lost. The demise of Google Reader most certainly accelerated the transition, but longer term I do not know whether if it had been left to evolve it wouldn't have morphed it into another one of the server side aggregated/curated walled gardens years ago.
Comments
I loved RSS for a while, and my client of choice was Google Reader. It solved aggregation of the articles, feeds implicitly have inherent notification, and the standardization of presentation elements bring calm to the consumer experience.
RSS has its flaws, some like the non uniformity of discovery were starting to standardize through customs, others, like the scaling and maintaining being left up to the individual while arguably a strength were at the time poorly supported.
When Google Reader disappeared there were few other quality readers polished enough to take over. Many offers tried to rush into the vacuum, some by revigorating their development, others by rushing out a Google Reader clone, but for the most part people did not follow because (a) alternatives were less slick and (b) for many the required housekeeping they had neglected for too long meant their overall feed file had accumulated so much cruft that they didn't want to reboot the effort.
I still do not know exactly why Reader which was extremely successful at the time was given the boot. I can imagine less add engagement, and also we were supposed to transition to Wave or G+ or was it still Orkut at the time?
Anyway, for the internet masses server side aggregation won, client side aggregation lost. The demise of Google Reader most certainly accelerated the transition, but longer term I do not know whether if it had been left to evolve it wouldn't have morphed it into another one of the server side aggregated/curated walled gardens years ago.