Quote:
Originally Posted by toddos
And that's the dirty secret of the readers of tech sites. 99% of the readers either can't or won't start a replacement. 0.9% may actually start, but they'll be dead on github or sourceforge in a month. The remaining 0.1% might actually do something, but those are the people who probably already are (the previously mentioned projects).
I'm a perfect case in point. I'm pissed that Reader is dying. I'm a professional software developer by trade. I'm not likely to spin off my own project to replace it, because between work, family, and other stuff I want to do there's no time to build a Reader replacement.
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Digg has announced it's launching a new version of Reader. I read somewhere else that a developer of some renown had been working on one for years and will reveal it at WWDC. Reeder has stated on Twitter that they'll find a way to continue providing service.
In my opinion, the hardest hit will be creators who rely on RSS to communicate with their readers, or who sell advertisement space in their RSS feeds. This move will fragment the reading base and cause a lot of people to simply abandon the protocol in favour of Twitter or other services like Zite and Flipboard.
The absolute worst case scenario for average users would be the emergence of a format war between new competitors. The beauty of Google Reader was that it worked with every app and OS and that data was easily migrated from one to the other.