When Google Reader finally closed its doors, it shoved thousands of teary-eyed RSS fans into cyberspace, adrift, where we flailed around desperately for a suitable replacement. Many services rose to the challenge, but the incoming wave was a lot to handle. Too much for one of our favourite alternatives — The Old Reader — which is taking a page from Googs and shutting down as well.
Technically, The Old Reader isn’t going totally offline, but it’s scaling back so far that it might as well be. The reader is going private, and all you Johnny-come-lately’s who joined up after March 13 (when Google announced the coming RSS-pocolypse) are out of luck, unless you already ponied up some bitcoin to help out.
Why? Because running a (good) RSS reader is hard. Especially when all of Google Reader’s homeless devotees suddenly show up at your door. As the reader’s devs explain:
Since we launched first public version almost a year ago up until March 2013 we have been working on The Old Reader in “normal” mode. …Last week difficulty level was changed to “hell” in every possible aspect we could imagine, we have been sleep deprived for 10 days and this impacts us way too much. We have to look back.
…I personally spent my own first wedding anniversary fixing the migration last Sunday.
Google Reader’s user-base might have been small for the search giant’s purposes, but it’s still quite the load for anyone who isn’t Google. This is a bummer. A sad, deeply ironic bummer. But then RSS readerin’ ain’t for the faint of heart. [The Old Reader via The Next Web]