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Adios, Feedly

rss_iconReading RSS feeds from multiple websites in a central, organized location that lets me quickly save items of interest without bothering me about posting to Facebook or telling what my friends are doing is a very important piece of my life. A good, clean RSS reader lets me quickly devour the day’s news, the latest trends, things my friends and family have written, and whatever else may be of interest to me.

I was an avid user of Google Reader until they shut it down earlier this year. Along with many other people, I sought an alternative home for my collection of important RSS feeds. I quickly found Feedly, and move everything over there. They seemed pretty hip, and while the interface and options took a little getting used to, it managed to satisfy my RSS needs (along with the mobile app) for a while.

Feedly started deploying a paid subscription model to get extra features, which seemed like a logical part of being a business, and I was OK with that. They didn’t take away anything I was used to in my free account. But they started making some boneheaded decisions, and the doubt started to percolate in the back of my mind.

2013-12-08_11-12-58
I am digging the options in InoReader so far

After perusing Reddit this morning, the last straw was drawn when I discovered this thread and this blog post dicussing Feedly’s new approach to hijacking shared links, thus cutting out the original content publishers (something they apparently backpedaled on pretty quickly). Not being someone who tries to make money from his blog, this was mildly concerning, but not that upsetting to me.

What did it for me was the CEO of Feedly making some off-putting comments on that blog post and generally being a jerk about it rather than listening to concerns and doing PR the right way. I decided to take my feeds and head over to InoReader. It was an easy import/export process, and InoReader feels much more comfortable to me so far. Their Android app looks decent as well.

Feedly's "support" page
Feedly’s “support” page

The funny thing is, I went to try and cancel my Feedly account, but I could not find a way to do so anywhere in the settings. I clicked on the “Support” link, and was taken to a page that advertised their services. There were no support options to be found anywhere.

If I figure out how to completely cancel my Feedly account, I will let you all know.

I will hopefully be happy in my new RSS house, but if not, there are still plenty of good looking alternatives out there.

Are you still an RSS user? What is your favorite reader?

Published inNewsSoftwareTech

2 Comments

  1. Hi Will,

    (This is Edwin from feedly)

    To cancel your subscription, please login to your pro account and go to http://feedly.com/#upgraded (which is the URL the support link points to) and there is a link at the bottom of the page to cancel your subscription.

    We do our share of mistakes while exploring how we can create value for readers and content creators but one thing that we have proven is that we listen. The reply you so from me was an attempt at explaining why we implemented the feature. We listened to the feedback and switched the feature from an opt-out to an opt-in.

    • Hi Edwin,
      Thanks for the response. I don’t have a Pro account, so I’m not able to take those steps to cancel my account.

      It is good that you have changed the feature from opt-out to opt-in. I think that the issue, for me, stems from the approach you initially took and the assumptions that were made in doing so. Whatever the case, best of luck with Feedly.

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