There are many fine RSS readers, but what I miss most was the social and community features.
The communities that spring up around things like GReader are like lightning in a bottle. Perhaps the companies that can afford to build things like that have concluded that other forms of social media are more profitable.
There still are niches of the internet that operate like a book club for excitable nerds, but they can be short-lived. Most eventually succumb to politics, lecturers, eternal September, and/or a zero-sum debate-team mentality.
On the other hand, I never used a thing in Google Reader other than subscribe to feeds. It's probably inevitable though that it would have become more of a social media product over time.
> It's probably inevitable though that it would have become more of a social media product over time.
Personally I would have welcomed that.
Google Reader did essentially become a social media product over time. By the end it was the primary social network for many of the people in my research area. I was mystified when they shut it down to redirect resources to yet another Facebook clone rather on building on a successful foundation that was already present.
By now most people realize that this is just how Google operates, by shuffling resources around in a blind panic. But many people can point to the first product shutdown that crystalized the realization for them. Google Reader was mine, and judging by the comments in this thread it served the same purpose for others as well.
Perhaps, but they were one more thing to log into, and the Reader/Gmail integration was unparalleled. Also, for those of us who really liked the simple Reader UI, nothing really ever replaced it. Not even the explicit attempts to mimic it.
The communities that spring up around things like GReader are like lightning in a bottle. Perhaps the companies that can afford to build things like that have concluded that other forms of social media are more profitable.
There still are niches of the internet that operate like a book club for excitable nerds, but they can be short-lived. Most eventually succumb to politics, lecturers, eternal September, and/or a zero-sum debate-team mentality.