What Wrong With RSS Readers

I’m using Feedly on my tablet on a daily basis for checking weblogs, and I use Pocket to read them later. Well, they’re quite fast, you don’t have to tolerate all those annoying ads, the size of the contents to be downloaded decreases dramatically (very important factor when you’re limited to 4GB per month!), and they’re much more legible. But there’s something that really bugs me: When you interact with websites and weblogs in this way, you can’t socialize with other people that are reading the same content as you do. You can’t see comments or post any. I mean, who bothers to reopen the site in a browser to just see comments or post one?

The spirit of these readers is literally in contrast with what every other app and program and company on the planet is investing in, connecting people with the same taste and interests to each other.

For instance, although I hate the Google Plus interface (and also Google Plus itself), I still find it much more rewarding and enjoyable to follow news and people with it. It gives you this chance to be part of a gathering of all people who care about the same thing as you. IMHO, it’s important that you have this ability to exchange and communicate with the source website. Implementing this feature and making it accessible can really be a big improvement among RSS readers. I assume the basic infrastructure for this capability already exists. So what are they waiting for? Those guys really need to shake the dust off of their products!

PS: I must admit it’s quite a controversial topic. For example, I’d like to refer to this “I suggest you …” page for Feedly.