Google Reader shuts down on July 1. If history is an indicator, iOS 7 will be released in late September. That's a gap of about two and a half months. I've decided that River of News will be dormant for that gap.
I'm excited about iOS 7. The design looks great and there are new capabilities that directly benefit an RSS reader. It will be difficult to support both iOS 6 and 7 and will lead to a product that isn't as good as it could be if focused on iOS 7 only.
River of News 2.0 has a new visual design that I love... for iOS 6. It will immediately look old and tired on iOS 7. I want to make a product that I feel is great. The one I'm looking at now won't be great on iOS 7.
I'm sorry that you won't have a version of River of News to use for the next few months. I've received a lot of encouraging emails telling me they don't want the app to go away. But the reality is I don't have the time to make a polished product for iOS 6 and 7. I'm a one-man show for River of News and it's revenue is small. My time is mostly dedicated to developing products for the awesome Savvy Apps mobile agency and it's clients.
I know I'm going to lose some of you as customers and that makes me sad. I hope when iOS 7 comes out you'll reconsider River of News because you want an app that is designed exclusively to be great on that platform.
Monday, June 17, 2013
Thursday, March 14, 2013
River of News (not) for Google Reader
Boooooo, Google!
You may have already seen the news that Google is shutting down Reader on July 1. I never understood why Google didn't try to expand Reader's usage and extract value from all of that data. Google is in the business of selling targeted ads, right? Google Reader is my gateway to the Internet. Even more so than search, it reveals my interests and creates an accurate profile of me.
You are probably reading this post because you want to know what will happen to River of News. The short answer is I don't know, yet, what it will look like but I intend to keep River of News alive in some form. I've put too much time into it and I like the product too much to abandon it. And the iPhone version is kick-ass! I read my feeds constantly on my phone which I never did in the past because I didn't like any of the available apps.
My suggestion to you is not to panic and don't feel the need to immediately find a replacement for Google Reader. You don't need to do anything for three months. Google Reader and River of News will continue to function.
The most important aspect of Google Reader is the ecosystem around it. The technical functions of syncing your subscription list and aggregating content from multiple sources are straightforward to replace. (That doesn't mean it wouldn't be time consuming to implement but the path is clear.) What is hard to replace is the ubiquity of a single platform that uses the Gmail account you already have and is accessible from any browser or tons of native apps for every operating system and device.
That's why I'm not going to decide my next move immediately and I encourage you to wait before finding a replacement
You may have already seen the news that Google is shutting down Reader on July 1. I never understood why Google didn't try to expand Reader's usage and extract value from all of that data. Google is in the business of selling targeted ads, right? Google Reader is my gateway to the Internet. Even more so than search, it reveals my interests and creates an accurate profile of me.
You are probably reading this post because you want to know what will happen to River of News. The short answer is I don't know, yet, what it will look like but I intend to keep River of News alive in some form. I've put too much time into it and I like the product too much to abandon it. And the iPhone version is kick-ass! I read my feeds constantly on my phone which I never did in the past because I didn't like any of the available apps.
My suggestion to you is not to panic and don't feel the need to immediately find a replacement for Google Reader. You don't need to do anything for three months. Google Reader and River of News will continue to function.
The most important aspect of Google Reader is the ecosystem around it. The technical functions of syncing your subscription list and aggregating content from multiple sources are straightforward to replace. (That doesn't mean it wouldn't be time consuming to implement but the path is clear.) What is hard to replace is the ubiquity of a single platform that uses the Gmail account you already have and is accessible from any browser or tons of native apps for every operating system and device.
That's why I'm not going to decide my next move immediately and I encourage you to wait before finding a replacement
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