Digg Hints Its Replacement For Google Reader Will Include Social Media Content

RougeFemme writes "To capitalize on Google Reader's shutdown, Digg is building an RSS reader from scratch. But this Reader replacement will go beyond RSS to include social media content, like Facebook, Tumblr, Hacker News, Reddit, LinkedIn, etc. From their blog post: 'Google did a lot of things right with its Reader, but based on what we’re hearing from users, there is room for meaningful improvement. We want to build a product that’s clean and flexible, that bends easily and intuitively to the needs of different users. We want to experiment with and add value to the sources of information that are increasingly important, but difficult to surface and organize in most reader applications — like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit, LinkedIn, or Hacker News. We likely won’t get everything we want into v1, but we believe it’s worth exploring."

Meaningful improvement?

[Anonymous Coward]

...but based on what we’re hearing from users, there is room for meaningful improvement.

....to include social media content, like Facebook, Tumblr, Hacker News, Reddit, LinkedIn, etc.

That's improvement? Oh God! Idiocracy here we come at warp speed!

Re:Digg?!

[interkin3tic]

Well, they evidently have someone to say that they are making an RSS reader that includes "features" that every other reader BESIDES Google reader had, so that's one. Perhaps they're now going to claim other apps as their own in addition to claiming content for their own?

I was excited briefly when I thought it said "will NOT include social media." Because that seems to be a rarity. Here's a wild thought guys: maybe the reason everyone was using google reader was because it did one thing and did it well, and didn't bug us about "LOGIN NOW with your Facebook, Tumblr, Hacker News, Reddit, LinkedIn, twitter, G+, Digg, stumbleupon, orkut, myspace, grindr, flickr, picassa, slashdot, memebase, youtube, fox news, and social security number to proceed."

If I want to see pictures of my friends from high school's babies pooping, I can load up facebook. If I want to go onto reddit, there are like a dozen apps for that.

So a bunch of junk I don't want in an RSS reader

[Minter92]

This is why I am writing my own simple reader. Just check the feed to see if there are new posts and link me to them. It's all I want.

Re:Reader

[girlintraining]

I've always wished for a standard protocol for social media.

And the social media website purveyors want anything but. People have been trying to hack together a way to show Facebook feed information minus all the advertising crap, the applications, the random way that it sometimes sorts by most recent and then spontaniously doesn't... the idea of "promoted" posts... it's all bullshit. The RSS feeds they had used to show your friends "feeds" as well, but then they crapped all over that, and they change their HTML and CSS code every few weeks in an aggressive attempt to prevent YOU from exporting your own data in a convenient, real-time fashion, while giving THEM (that is, their advertisers, app purveyors, etc.) full access to everything... as long as they don't publish it in a nice, convenient, standardized fashion for third parties to use. Right there in the EULA even.

I admire Digg's attempt to do this... but if they succeed, it will be at some terrible (privacy) price, if Mark F*ckerberg doesn't screw the pooch first.