{"id":646885,"date":"2013-03-14T15:14:35","date_gmt":"2013-03-14T19:14:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=620619"},"modified":"2013-03-14T15:14:35","modified_gmt":"2013-03-14T19:14:35","slug":"digg-dont-worry-google-reader-fans-were-building-an-alternative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/646885","title":{"rendered":"Digg: Don\u2019t worry, Google Reader fans, we\u2019re building an alternative"},"content":{"rendered":"

For those of us who rely on Google Reader for organization of our RSS feeds and staying up to date on the day’s news, the announcement yesterday that Google will shutter the project<\/a> as part of a\u00a0“spring cleaning”<\/a> was fairly devastating. But almost instantly, a few clever companies like Feedly<\/a> began highlighting their support and solutions for RSS orphans. And on Thursday, Digg jumped into the fray with the promise of such a new answer to Google Reader.<\/p>\n

Reuters had reported Wednesday<\/a> night that the Betaworks-owned company<\/a> had something in the works, and on Thursday the company released a blog post explaining that it has been working on something around Reader, but will speed up production in light of Google Reader’s imminent demise on July 1:<\/p>\n

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“We\u2019ve heard people say that RSS is a thing of the past, and perhaps in its current incarnation it is, but as daily (hourly) users of Google Reader, we\u2019re convinced that it\u2019s a product worth saving. So we\u2019re going to give it our best shot. We\u2019ve been planning to build a reader in the second half of 2013, one that, like Digg, makes the Internet a more approachable and digestible place. After Google\u2019s announcement, we\u2019re moving the project to the top of our priority list. We\u2019re going to build a reader, starting today.<\/p>\n

Since 2010, when we started working on\u00a0News.me<\/a>\u00a0at betaworks, we\u2019ve been obsessed with building tools that surface the most interesting things on the Internet, in real-time. That\u2019s what has guided our approach to\u00a0rebuilding Digg<\/a>, and it\u2019s with that experience behind us (including a whole load of mistakes), that we will build the new reader.<\/p>\n

We hope to identify and rebuild the best of Google Reader\u2019s features (including its API), but also advance them to fit the Internet of 2013, where networks and communities like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit and Hacker News offer powerful but often overwhelming signals as to what\u2019s interesting. Don\u2019t get us wrong: we don\u2019t expect this to be a trivial undertaking. But we\u2019re confident we can cook up a worthy successor.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Om published an interview Wednesday night with Google Reader creator<\/a> Chris Wetherell, who’s working on his startup Avocado now<\/a>, and Wetherell explained that Google Reader always lived on borrowed\u00a0time. But as Buzzfeed’s John Herrman<\/a>\u00a0pointed out, the RSS reader was still driving significant traffic for many publishers, and as Laura Owen wrote for PaidContent, Google Reader’s demise could have a significant impact on digital publishers and news outlets<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Whether Digg’s new product solves the problems that Google Reader’s exit creates is unclear, but creating a news reader built on RSS from scratch could allow for some innovation around a product that hasn’t changed much<\/a> since the mid-2000′s. If you’re interested in following Digg’s progress, the company has a sign-up list … along with a highly depressing countdown until Google Reader is really dead<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Digg<\/a><\/p>\n

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