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The Old Reader Will Stay Open To the Public Thanks To US Corporation

Posted by samzenpus on from the bail-out dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Old Reader, a popular RSS service and alternative to Google Reader, last week revealed it would be closing its service to the public in two weeks. Soon after the backlash, there was hint of a stance reversal, and now it's happened: The Old Reader will remain open to the public, thanks to a bigger team and 'significantly more' resources, both provided by a new corporate entity located in the US. While details about this 'corporate entity' are indeed scarce, we do know the announcement was authored by an individual named Ben Wolf. He promises his team consists of 'big fans and users' of The Old Reader who want to help it 'grow and improve for years to come' and who will be introduced properly in the coming weeks."

9 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Oh right, like we're going to believe that. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    NSA?

  2. It's Levee Labs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't know them, but a Ben Wolf runs it and their twitter mentions two exciting new projects to be announced soon.

    Sources: Google, LinkedIn, Twitter

  3. Re:Obvious astroturfing is obvious by jamesh · · Score: 2

    Please turn in your geek credentials at the door. Thanks in advance.

    "Papers, please"

  4. Self-hosting is an alternative by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Just go with TT-RSS and host your RSS aggregator yourself if you have the skill/hardware. The Old Reader will still need to find a business model. Feedly announced their cash grab earlier today. The lunch will not be free anyway in the long run.

    If you don't want to host it yourself, go with one of the up-front honest for-pay services. "No cost, hosting for free!" obviously means "no reliability" in this new era of online feed aggregators.

    1. Re:Self-hosting is an alternative by yotto · · Score: 2

      Yeah the day they announced they were dropping public support I downloaded RSS-Owl and other than continually forgetting to run it (because I'm used to a browser window opening up to my RSS feeds) it's working great.

      Screw the cloud and all its uncertainty.

      --
      Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
  5. Re:Obvious astroturfing is obvious by the+grace+of+R'hllor · · Score: 2

    Actually, I've been using the Old Reader for a few months, mainly due to it's interface being very similar to Google Reader.

    It's slow as shit, though. And they recently had a few day's outage and data loss.

  6. thanks, U.S. Corporation! by Trepidity · · Score: 2

    As always, the munificence of U.S. Corporation in making life better for us all is deeply appreciated.

    --
    10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
  7. Too Late by Goody · · Score: 3, Informative

    I switch to InoReader after the Old Reader told me they were dumping me and everyone who signed up after the Google Reader announcement. And that was after a two day outage and several other small outages. They had a prime start-up opportunity and they blew it when they lost their cool and alienated a lot of users.

    --
    Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
  8. Re:Too late by JackieBrown · · Score: 3, Informative

    I switched to inoreader after reading the recommendations here. Of course, I had started using oldreader based on the recommendations here so we will see how that goes.

    I'd set up TT-RSS, but my work blocks all ports (at least the ones I tried) except for 80 and I am using that for other stuff at home already.