I recently wrote about how large the feed reading ecosystem could be. Specifically how large the pad market could be. In that post I wrote about how people say a Google Reader shut down is a good thing because there will be rapid innovation in the space, but few talked about what that innovation could be. I agree, but think that innovation is a matter of iteration and revision and not always a complete break from what came before.

For that reason I am writing a series of posts where in I identity the core competencies of any Google Reader replacement. I don’t think that people should be limited to doing things exactly how Reader did them, but it helps to identify what it did correctly. Also, extracting those features into the patterns they represent, not just the form they held as Reader features, is a good idea

My goal is to illustrate in a broad way that using a feed reading can be advantageous for everyone, even if it requires an investment of time.

Core to this whole series is the idea that power users aren’t in there own little corner. Power users live on a continuum from newbie to power user. Something for us isn’t always neglecting the newbie.

Then I want to talk about other things that probably aren’t core to the RSS feed readers, but I hope illuminate why feed readers are awesome.

Stay tuned.

Clearly, the market for feed readers is in transition. With only the mention of Google Reader closing, we’ve seen large user movement. Feedly alone gained more than 3 million new users recently¹. In the midst of all this change, more than a few people have said, “This is going to mean good things.” But what does that really mean?

Any “good thing” will have to be driven by the makers of feed readers, so I am going to start there. If I was going to enter the market, I would want to know where the walls are. In this case, you need to figure out how big the market is. I can’t find any research that has directly tried to answer this since 2005, when a Pew Internet Foundation poll found that 5% of online users used RSS Aggregators². We don’t have such hard data nowadays, so I set out to try and estimate the size.

I wanted to determine the number of people who use RSS on a monthly basis. Also, how they use feeds is important. I only want to estimate the people who are using something that works like Google Reader. There are a lot of people who use RSS when they use something like Flipboard, but don’t know they are using RSS.

This is more like a Fermi estimate than hard science, but I think it’s in the right order of magnitude.

Some numbers

• In 2005, the Pew Internet foundation found that 5% of the online population was using RSS.
• In 2010, a Reader product manager is quoted as saying Google Reader had “tens of millions of monthly active users.”³
• CNN had 25,120,973 subscribers on April 15th, 2013.⁴
• Engadget had 6,840,662 subscribers on April 15th, 2013.⁵

To be conservative, If we give CNN a very high market penetration, like 50%, then we can estimate that the entire Google Reader ecosystem is roughly 50 million users. This is backed up by the claim that in 2010 Google reader had, “tens of millions of monthly active users.” Second, I estimate that Reader is 80% of the total market for this type of RSS reader, which would put the total market at roughly 65 million users.

That’s not a small market by any means, and if treated right, it will probably grow, but that’s not the end of the story. What we all really want to know is what is the size of the paid market. For this, I would point at conversion rates for existing freemium services. If Evernote gets 6%⁶ Dropbox gets 4%⁷, and Flickr gets 7%⁸, it looks reasonable based on these other data that the RSS service of the future would get 4%. So, that means we are looking at 2.6 million paying feed-reading customers.

This isn’t going to be a huge world changing ecosystem, but there is room for one little monster to take it all.

PS: Thanks go to many people for this post. Jon Mitchell for editing. Thanks to Julien from Superfeedr, and Brent Simmons for reviewing my numbers, and feedback.

I am currently researching this question, but if you know the answer, or even if you think you know the answer. Let me know.

http://alpha.app.net/voidfiles

http://twitter.com/voidfiles

PS: Right now, I think the whole market is around 100 million active monthly users.

Brent Simmons created a mailing list to talk about any new potential RSS syncing services.

“I created a new mailing list for people who want to talk about the technical side of RSS syncing.

Ideally there would be a single standard for RSS syncing, and clients could choose among systems. But I don’t insist on that — at least not yet. I think it’s ambitious enough just to get some working sync systems up and running.” - Brent Simmons

No matter what happens, I always love when RSS is “threatened”. Everyone comes out to shake off their well worn rugs to demonstrate that, yes, RSS is really a well used, and loved technology.

Whenever there are big changes to Google Reader Chris Wetherell usually has something insightful to say. In the latest cycle he has done an interview with Om Malik, but he hasn’t written a post yet.

It’s not surprising given that he is the creator of Google Reader that he might have something to say. I have always enjoyed his posts in the past.

Given that we are about to see a bunch of new feed readers, the reason I am waiting is that his old posts about the birth of Google Reader are always incredibly insightful, even upon re-reading. Whenever the RSS conversation starts I always go back to the original principles that he laid down for his own feed reader.

“Feed reading is inherently polymorphic … I believed a feed reader’s interface might have to be athletically flexible to match a wide variety of reading styles … Based only partly on user growth after each view launched it’s my opinion that Reader’s frontend flexibility has been crucial to its success.” - Chris Wetherell

I think that when people talk about RSS readers everyone thinks that how they use a feed reader is the most common way, but that can’t be true. Not only are their so many different readers, but there are so many different ways to configure each reader that we can’t all be doing it the same way. And yet, when each new feed reader is born we all expect it to do everything we want, and yet he did.

We are looking now at a bunch of RSS readers being born, and I wonder how many of them are going back and reading these posts?

• Considering Google Reader Lore.
• About Google Reader’s Birth: Part 1.
• About Google Reader’s Birth: Part 2.
• Four Firsts for Feeds
• Dreams, discernment, and Google Reader

I wrote a guest blog post on App.net’s blog today, How App.net could be helpful to next generation RSS readers. The impact of Google Reader has gotten everyone talking about RSS readers. When I started to write the blog post for App.net something occured to me, that wasn’t appropriate for that venue. What I am struck with recently is how short messages systems like App.net have augmented feed reading. Marshall Mcluhan said, “The medium is the message”, and we are seeing the message change because we are changing our medium.

Even though RSS use has waned in recent years, it hasn’t disappeared, instead it has been augmented. I first heard about Google Reader while using Bloglines, but I first heard that Google reader will be closing on App.net. These two facts show how the RSS Reader scene has changed since Google Reader became a product. Blogs are no longer the fastest way to get news, but that doesn’t mean they have lost their use it just means we use them differently.

I am excited to see the many discussions on App.net about Google Reader, and RSS. I am also excited about all the ways that App.net can help out in this rush of innovation.

It was nice knowing you were all out there, but now that Google Reader is being killed, I suppose, it’s time to say goodbye.

Soon, over 99% of you will cease to subscribe to my feed. As you can see almost everyone who subscribes to my feed uses Google Reader.

If my feed looks at all like other feeds one day soon they are going to loose all their subscribers. In the grand scheme this is probably just a blip, but for many of us this… fuck I don’t know its just a BFD.

I am going to rip this band aid off soon. I have been looking for a reason to migrate away from feedburner as well. Seeing as how I will loose all my subscribers anyway I’ll just get this over with now.

When I stopped to sift through the many blogs I read I was struck by one common theme; I love blogs that let me peek into other professions at the elite level. Something about learning from other people who are performing at their peak is inspiring.

Another aspect of the feeds I read is that many aren’t “written”. Some of my favorite feeds just expose some of the best content in certain communities.

Basically, if I often stop to read a feed, the feed makes me laugh, or it just makes me exclaim WTF, I like it.

Interesting Link Fountains

Stellar Interesting’s faves

Kottke’s side project stellar trys to aggregate stars/likes/hearts. The interesting feed surfaces the faves of all the things.

Popular Favorites | MetaFilter

Metafilter is a stalwart from the early web 2.0 days. It’s built an awesome community. Unfortunately I don’t take part in it, but I do use RSS to tap into the great discussions.

One Thing Well

Simple software covered simply.

Open Culture

Like it says on the the tin, the best free cultural & educational media on the web. Always finding old bits of interviews from amazing people.

Edward Tufte Forum

this is a forum where people talk about visualization. It’s slightly arcane. Sometimes they ask Edward Tufte questions; sometimes he answers. I subscribe to the feed because every once in a while the answer is amazing. Like this one on figuring out what theoretical theory to use when designing analytical displays.

#MMMercury

Top posts on App.net. Picked by the finest algorithms. My side project.

The Changelog

Covers new and interesting open source projects.

News & Journalism

Muni Diaries

Blogs offer the opportunity to connect people to hyperlocal beat reporters. I haven’t seen a ton of this that is done well, yet, but Muni Diaries is my favorite example of hyperlocal reporting.

Nieman Journalism Lab

Great coverage of new ideas in journalism which necessarily moves into blog/online publishing territory.

Journerdism

Always great coverage of ideas in journalism.

The Feature

Mining the best stuff saved to Instapaper.

Officials Say the Darndest Things

Give a politician a microphone for long enough and eventually they are going to say something that we can all laugh about.

Daniel Bachhuber

Interesting hacker/journo who works for Automattic (the company behind Wordpress).

ShortFormBlog

Good slice of the news blog.

Quotations from The Browser

Topcial quotations.

Old Stalwarts - but still good

Snarkmarket

Quirky off the beaten path readings. They self describe as “it’s a long-running conversation about media, journalism, technology, cities, culture, design, books, music, movies, the future and the past”

Marginal Revolution

“Small steps toward a much better world.” — Economics? Weird ideas? Awesome links for sure.

O’Reilly Radar

All these years still has good stuff. Especially ‘Four Short Links’ a daily list by Nat.

kottke.org

yep, still good.

Waxy.org

Baio chose to put the creator of Community in the keynote position of his conference. I would read his blog for the reason alone, but there are many more.

kung fu grippe

While you wait for another 43 Folders blog post this is his other jam.

Art & Design

The New Aesthetic

The world is changing because of digital technology. This blog tracks some of the aesthetic effects digital has on the real world.

Art F City

I like reading about the art market this blog feeds that.

Wooster Collective

Street art coverage.

Siiimple - Minimalist CSS Gallery

Siiimple is a collection of the best minimalist css designs on the whole internet machine. Don’t believe me, have a look for yourself…

Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report

Zeldman has a huge effect on CSS, HTML, and Design. Through his blog, and his conferences.

Jorge Quinteros

I don’t subscribe to many photo blogs, but this one is great. I really appreciate that he highlights so many other photographers too. He has also embraced the digital photography movement.

ScriptShadow

“Screenwriting and Screenplay reviews” — This one blog is actually effecting the script market in Hollywood. I just like his reviews of scripts. Sometimes he will do a review of a movie where he also reviewed the script and will focus on how well he thought it was made into a movie.

John August

“A ton of useful information about screenwriting from screenwriter John August” — Yea, he is actually a screenwriter. He has also helped create a Markdown variant called Fountain for screenwriters.

Subtraction.com

Previously head online designer at NY Times, then creator of Mixel, is now blogging again.

Workflow & Geekery

And now it’s all this

Academic/research oriented information gathering workflows. Highly detailed look at research tools.

Macdrifter

One of the more wonkish blogs when it comes to workflows and the mac.

Bridging the Nerd Gap

Dude literally wrote the book on evernote.

Shawn Blanc

Covers the techno/mac nerd beat better then most.

I Don’t Know — I just like them

Tor.com

From Tor the Sci-Fi publishers comes their blog which covers way more then books.

Brian S Hall

There always has to be a guy in the room yelling at everyone else telling them how stupid they are. It keeps everyone honest.

Global Guerrillas

Watchdog. Always on the outlook for what cool technology today could be tomorrows privacy intrusion, or even tomorrows weapon.

Khymos

Dedicated to molecular gastronomy — New food tech: check.

clusterflock

As far as I can tell clusterflock is a loose collective of people brought together through the Internet to tell stories of the Internet. Very hard to describe, but a fountain of win.

The Dan Plan

A random guy testing the 10,000 hours theory with golf. A multi year project and he is keeping a blog through it all.

Brent Simmons — inessential.com

Creator of NetNewsWire writes about many things. RSS and Blogs are just one aspect, but my favorite.

At App.net we collect a metric ton of stats. When I build anything I try to collect some stats. We all must do that. Why not right, stats are fun. The hard part comes when you need to formulate those stats into information. It’s not easy. Slowly, I learned what to watch, what was important. It’s hard earned intuition, but intuition is no substitute for a well structured argument. Which is why I loved this short piece by Edward Tufte.

I could really could pull a quotes from any part but here are my highlights.

The purpose of analytical displays of information is to assist thinking about evidence.

I think this is the baseline. Only show what you need to help you understand what’s going on.

Analytical graphics should be constructed to serve the fundamental cognitive tasks in reasoning about evidence: describing the data, making comparisons, understanding causality, assessing credibility of data and analysis. Thus the logic of design replicates the logic of analysis; design reasoning emulates evidence reasoning.

Don’t just show graphs because they look pretty. Hopefully you have graphs that help you understand whats working, and whats not. In some sense our graphs at the office have become like an outboard 6th sense. I sometimes react to graphs physically before I have consciously understood what has happened.

In working on 4 books on analytical design, I have often turned to the human factors literature, and then left in despair, finding few examples or ideas (beyond common-sensical) that were useful in my own work. This contrasts to the work of scientists, artists, art historians, and architects–work overflowing with ideas about evidence, seeing, and the craft of making analytical displays.

While I don’t have such a hard-line stance about the art of things, I definitely feel there is a lot of BS when it comes to design.

Anyway read it for your self. It’s good.

Pythonista has been popping up recently in my stream, cough Federico Viticci on App.net cough. So much so, I had to take a look. I also had a petty annoyance that I figured Pythonista could help me fix. There are probably better introductions, but this how I got up to speed.

My goal was the take feedburner links, you know the kind you would find in an RSS reader, and unwrap them into their real URLs. Feedburner also adds some query string cruft, so that had to go as well. In the end you would have a URL worthy of posting on your social network of choice. All of this could happen with out going over to your big boy computer.

After downloading Pythonista I stalled. Getting random bits of text to your phone is still a little tricky. This is the hardest part of Pythonista, at least in the first 5 minutes, getting code onto the phone in a sane way. Luckily, someone has gone down this path before me and I can just follow in their steps.

After installing, the first step is to use this gist. Copy, and paste this into a script called gistcheck. Then run the code. It will set up more scripts for you to use. ¹

Now you’ll have a couple of new scripts from which you can create actions. Goto settings find the “Actions Menu”, scroll to the bottom and you will see your new scripts. Add them.

The next thing you need to do is setup the bookmarklet mentioned in the gistcheck ². This will allow you to open a gist in mobile safari and save it to your scripts in pythonista.

From here you can create a gist with the code for any script you want. Then you can use the bookmarklet to get it into pythonista. From that point forward you can use Gist Pull action to update your script. On your dev box you can clone the gist, and push updates to github.

To solve my specific problem I developed this gist. Any text that is on your clipboard that has text surrounded by **[text]** will be replaced with a URL that has been unwrapped, and URL decrufted.