Newsblur

Aug 3, 2013 ∞

How the death of Google Reader is saving RSS

Ben Popper, at The Verge¹:

Some Reader partisans may have given up on RSS after the shutdown, but the majority seem to have migrated to other platforms. In the weeks following the announcement, Feedly saw 3 million Google Reader refugees sign up and Newsblur says it now has 25 times the paid subscriptions it did in March.

Interesting. It looks like Google inadvertently revived the very market Reader killed when it debuted.

I’m still relying on Feedly right now, and they’re the paid option I’m most likely to go with whenever they begin offering a premium tier, but the options are admittedly plentiful.

And there’s no denying that the death of Reader, in retrospect, was probably the best thing to happen to RSS since, well, the birth of RSS.

I like my headline (above the quote) better than Mr. Popper’s, which is “A month after Google killed its beloved Reader, the market for paid RSS tools is booming.” His is more informative, but for some reason mine just feels better. Arrogance? ↩