http://tidbits.com/ Google’s announcement that it will be shuttering Google Reader in a few months causes Adam Engst to ponder a host of related topics, ranging from the distinction between tools and platforms to the silent war being waged against us by the infinite. en-us Copyright 2013 TidBITS Publishing Inc. Tue, 19 Mar 2013 00:00:00 EDT Tue, 19 Mar 2013 00:00:00 EDT editors@tidbits.com (TidBITS Editors) editors@tidbits.com (TidBITS Editors) http://tidbits.com/images/tb_logo_152x55.png http://tidbits.com/ 55 152 TidBITS badge http://db.tidbits.com/article/13636?rss#comments_18006 Tue, 19 Mar 2013 09:03:30 EDT http://tidbits.com/article/13636#comments_18006 http://db.tidbits.com/article/13636?rss#comments_17967 Mon, 18 Mar 2013 07:35:12 EDT http://tidbits.com/article/13636#comments_17967
Plus, this is measuring things from the opposite side from what Google is saying. Google claims that user traffic for Google Reader is in decline - in other words, that fewer people are using Google Reader to read. That's an entirely different metric from how much traffic a Web site sees from a particular source, and is more relevant to informing Google's decision than to commenting on the value of the underlying technology.

That may be a bit confusing, but in short, I think BuzzFeed is right, but it's only really relevant from the perspective of publishers. RSS is a great way to increase traffic stats (whether or not those stats are real) for publishers, far more so than social networking, but that doesn't mean more people are using RSS over social sharing.

(If we had to survive on links from social media, we'd disappear - social sharing is a lousy way of generating significant traffic, and is even worse at generating reliable traffic.)]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/13636?rss#comments_17950 Sun, 17 Mar 2013 11:55:51 EDT http://tidbits.com/article/13636#comments_17950 http://db.tidbits.com/article/13636?rss#comments_17946 Sun, 17 Mar 2013 08:37:57 EDT http://tidbits.com/article/13636#comments_17946 http://db.tidbits.com/article/13636?rss#comments_17940 Sat, 16 Mar 2013 10:30:29 EDT http://tidbits.com/article/13636#comments_17940 http://db.tidbits.com/article/13636?rss#comments_17933 Fri, 15 Mar 2013 14:28:21 EDT http://tidbits.com/article/13636#comments_17933 http://db.tidbits.com/article/13636?rss#comments_17931 Fri, 15 Mar 2013 12:52:25 EDT http://tidbits.com/article/13636#comments_17931
Buzzfeed asserts that more web traffic is driven by Reader than by Google+, so maybe this is one way G+ is eliminating the competition.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jwherrman/google-reader-still-sends-far-more-traffic-than-google]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/13636?rss#comments_17930 Fri, 15 Mar 2013 12:49:38 EDT http://tidbits.com/article/13636#comments_17930
My guess is that Google is going to use this as a means to try to push people into using Plus.]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/13636?rss#comments_17927 Fri, 15 Mar 2013 06:46:21 EDT http://tidbits.com/article/13636#comments_17927 http://db.tidbits.com/article/13636?rss#comments_17926 Fri, 15 Mar 2013 06:18:18 EDT http://tidbits.com/article/13636#comments_17926
But when I talk about the infinite, I'm thinking about it slightly differently. It's not about companies competing for our attention, but us sitting down and staring out at that sea of information, stretching out to the horizon. Where do you begin, when faced with an ocean? The choices are crippling.]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/13636?rss#comments_17925 Fri, 15 Mar 2013 06:15:08 EDT http://tidbits.com/article/13636#comments_17925 http://db.tidbits.com/article/13636?rss#comments_17924 Fri, 15 Mar 2013 05:17:38 EDT http://tidbits.com/article/13636#comments_17924
Back when Google Reader dropped its internal sharing features, other services like Feedspot started popping up. But if you try using that today, the performance is still sub-par. I suspect I'll be giving Newsblur a go, next.

Adam nails the flaw of following others to get your news, and no-one stops and asks where and how *they* discover the tid-bits that they pass on? RSS and an RSS reader can bring all those disparate web sites, blogs, and forums into one convenient, easy to follow, place. (Like we had with Usenet, before the web grew in popularity)

It's interesting, also, that in Twitter's recent API revamp they dropped RSS feeds. Perhaps they were too convenient a way to follow someone's tweets from outside of the Twitter eco-system? Twitter need that social-network lockin, to pay for their massive, centralised service.]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/13636?rss#comments_17922 Thu, 14 Mar 2013 18:38:46 EDT http://tidbits.com/article/13636#comments_17922 http://db.tidbits.com/article/13636?rss#comments_17920 Thu, 14 Mar 2013 17:44:57 EDT http://tidbits.com/article/13636#comments_17920 http://db.tidbits.com/article/13636?rss#comments_17919 Thu, 14 Mar 2013 16:44:31 EDT http://tidbits.com/article/13636#comments_17919 http://db.tidbits.com/article/13636?rss#comments_17918 Thu, 14 Mar 2013 15:12:14 EDT http://tidbits.com/article/13636#comments_17918