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The Pogue Piece on Reader

David Pogue wrote a piece yesterday about Google reader. Explaining the Reader situation in plain english. In it I think he exemplifies the current market while completely missing the larger picture.

What he gets right is the broad picture, i.e., What a feed reader is, and what has happened. He had a good solid broad definition. Makes it sound simple, which could be one reason no one wants to pay, but sufficient.

“Google Reader is what’s called, somewhat geekily, a newsreader, or painfully geekily, an RSS aggregator.” — source

What he unintentionally though is exemplify the market. I can tell from this snippet that he doesn’t read sites like I do, he doesn’t read sites like Daring Fireball that are full content:

“Occasionally, you can read the entire article without leaving the newsreader page; that’s up to whoever published the article.” — source

Which exemplifies the market. There are is no one way that people read. Which means that not everyone will be pleased with feedly, the reader he recommends as a replacement.

I am left with a sense of anguish, sure he covered the bases, but I just have more questions that will go unanswered. If Google Reader is so niche that it couldn’t be a Google product, why the hell is David Pogue writing about it. Also there is no talk of money. How is Feedly going to survive when they don’t have a viable revenue source? Aren’t we just looking at another countdown to the closure of yet another feed reader?

What’s ever more clear to me is that we need a platform. One that is paid for, so that we can create a stable base for others to experiment on top of.