On http://newsblur.com users have two options for sharing links. They can either use a Send To feature, which uses the story's original URL, and hook it up to any number of third party services like Twitter, Facebook, Evernote, Tumblr, Instapaper, etc.
Or they can share to their blurblog, which is a shared stories blog. When users share links to their blurblog, the tweeted link goes to the user's blurblog, like so: http://samuel.newsblur.com/story/family-feuds/4e65d5. It includes their commentary and offers a place to reply to the user. Alternatively, you can turn on a setting that takes you directly to the story.
I think Feedly's intention here isn't what's best for users, since you don't have the option to comment on the story and have people reply to you, which would necessitate its own page. This is more of the Send To feature described above, and I think it's part of their drive to find additional revenue where there isn't much.
RSS is not a growing market and I think only independent developers with small costs will end up alive in a few years. Feedly will either have to evolve and find a bigger market, or pare down the cost of hosting the majority of Google Reader expats. And that doesn't square well with taking investment.
> RSS is not a growing market and I think only independent developers with small costs will end up alive in a few years. Feedly will either have to evolve and find a bigger market, or pare down the cost of hosting the majority of Google Reader expats. And that doesn't square well with taking investment.
Exactly right.
The rush to fill the Reader gap with a broad and compelling offering (high quality mobile and web apps) was a problem outside the scope of small developers, but the long term prospects for the market are below sustaining levels for larger, funded businesses.
I do hope Feedly can figure out a way, without making me dislike them en route. If not, I hope they offer a data export.
They should be tackling monetisation for publishers, microtransactions, spotify-style royalties, etc. There's a lot of room for innovation in the RSS market, but being arrogant and squeezing as much as you can out of free content doesn't help anyone in the long run.
You might be right... but there's a lot of room for innovation because nobody has been able to come up with anything that works, not because nobody tried.
The problem that i see is that once big 'popular' readers are gone, it's possible that publishers decide that RSS is a feature not worth having/maintaining. That's a choice that has been made already by platforms like Twitter and such.
A lot of new (more recent) blog platforms also did not prioritize RSS.
So, as much as I agree with the statement, I'm worried that in the end, we'll all lose.
Finally, Feedly's strategy here is probably one of the best way to make sure that publishers stop puvblising RSS feeds.
Newsblur[0] is a great open-source[1] feed-reader that not only beats Feedly in ease of use, but also has a bunch of great additional features over the standard RSS reader, with apps for both iOS and Android to complement the killer web-app. I highly recommend it.
I went with NewsBlur b/c I didn't like Feedly requiring my gmail address.
After 5 months I finally subscribed, because it seems to work well enough and I want to see it survive. I'd easily have paid Google the same amount or more for a Reader subscription, but hey with Reader gone, I'll have to migrate to Google Plus right?
As I mentioned in the email I sent to Nate earlier this morning, the goal of this feature is to 1) help content creators increase their readership in feedly (when a user discovers your content and adds it to his feedly, they are converting a one time visitor into a repeat engaged user) and 2) help user consume content faster on mobile device.
We are early in the design and implementation of this feature. If you are a publisher and want to work with us on improving this feature (we are working on some interesting features around discovery, call to action, analytics), please email me at edwin@feedly.com If you do not want to benefit form this feature, you can also sent me an email and we will quickly opt you out.
As a subscriber, and avid fan of feedly, the only thing that I see missing from the feedly reeder is the ability to consume content offline, particularly when I'm mobile, so I'm happy you are working on helping users consume content faster on mobile devices.
If I read the OP article correctly, the major issue is that feedly is now changing the link for an article away from the publishers site, and sending it back to feedly. That's not cool, and I'm hoping you revert back to the original behavior of the sharing feature, and send back the publishers link, not a "feedly link".
I love your product - use it first thing when I wake up, over breakfast, dinner, and just before I go to sleep. Will probably pay you any reasonable subscription fee you ask for. I realize you have to experiment, try new things, or stagnate - this was probably an experiment that went awry. Yes, it will drive more customers to feedly, and, in the short term, show you really good uptake - but, in the long term, it will just attract bad karma from publishers - Your entire value proposition comes from the repackaging of other people's content, that they've allowed you to distribute free of charge, so, at the very least, you can hand out the original link.
This is a reoccurring trend with Feedly (taking advantage of content creators while making money off of their content)
Unlike most RSS readers, Feedly refuses to share how many readers a content creator has via their user-agent (the standard method for doing this). When I asked them about this, they simply said to wait for analytics in 2014. https://twitter.com/feedly/status/408797947053101058
Are you going to make me pay for that too Feedly?
I really like their product but can't stand their policies. Why piss off the very same people who are feeding your product?
If you do a search for your feed you will see the number of readers.
Right now the API is limited to developers building user facing apps. Offering a long term API to other kinds of developers is not a commitment we are ready to make.
The analytics we mentioned in that tweet will be free.
What's the issue with using the same user-agent method that's a standard with other feed-readers? Seems like you're doing extra work so that blog authors can also do extra work.
Isn't copying someone else's blog content to your own site copyright infringement? Couldn't the author of the content send Feedly a DMCA takedown notice?
Depends on what content we are talking about - RSS content is viewed within the reader, so it's fine for a RSS reader to copy content and provide it to the user. The issue here isn't copying content, it's that Feedly is changing the URL from the publishers site to their own site - which is distinctly not cool.
Note - I love feedly, and, with the exception of HN, NYT, xkcd and twitter, it's where I consume all my content from the web. This was just a misstep, and I'm sure they'll do the right thing.
Feedly and other news reader services have de facto permission to gather blog posts at the request of users and then show them to those users. This is a half step beyond that, so you can't really call it copyright infringement.
I've been using http://www.feedbin.me for months now, and have been generally very happy with it. Not the least of all reasons why is that it has a very easy to understand business model: pay $3/month.
This is something I noticed while developing BuzzSumo (a real-time searching for trending content). The top most shared links for a topic were from feedly, with the original article after that. We ended up just blacklisting feedly, so that the original article would appear.
"Social" is eating the world. From the inside. Like a peptic ulcer.
I noticed this behaviour in the Feedly iOS app yesterday and wondered if it was new. Evaded it by sending the link to Safari and copying the URL from there.
I like Feedly. I empathize with what I imagine to be their internal discussions about how to add value that they can extract for themselves. I hope they can succeed in a way that doesn't ruin their product.
Bummed out Feedly users: if you’re looking for a no-nonsense slick RSS reader please have a look at https://kouio.com – I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
If they only did it for their users it would just be a sort of SaaS browser. However simply republishing entire feeds like this makes it feel more like a blatant copyright violation.
I don't know if that site has now been opted-out of whatever Feedly is doing, or something else - but the example link given goes straight to the-digital-reader.com for me...
Without being able to see what's going on, I'd have to guess that Feedly is wrapping the content, putting their own header and subscribe button on the top and using an iframe to pull in the original content - in which case they're not hosting it on their website, as alleged.
Or they can share to their blurblog, which is a shared stories blog. When users share links to their blurblog, the tweeted link goes to the user's blurblog, like so: http://samuel.newsblur.com/story/family-feuds/4e65d5. It includes their commentary and offers a place to reply to the user. Alternatively, you can turn on a setting that takes you directly to the story.
I think Feedly's intention here isn't what's best for users, since you don't have the option to comment on the story and have people reply to you, which would necessitate its own page. This is more of the Send To feature described above, and I think it's part of their drive to find additional revenue where there isn't much.
RSS is not a growing market and I think only independent developers with small costs will end up alive in a few years. Feedly will either have to evolve and find a bigger market, or pare down the cost of hosting the majority of Google Reader expats. And that doesn't square well with taking investment.