Ask HN: I'm building (yet another) RSS Reader – should I quit or give it a try? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I'm building (yet another) RSS Reader – should I quit or give it a try?

monoclereader.com

2 pointstmartty6 comments

Sure why not? I could always use another one for testing purposes. Although I have a feeling that based on the design, it won't work for me.

There's an open-source reader called Monocle already, that's an unlucky naming collision (although somewhat expected if using normal language nouns): https://github.com/aaronpk/Monocle

As a happy user of Inoreader, my main question about "yet another" would be: What can you offer that the established players don't have? Growth is probably fairly slow for traditional feed readers, since people likely either don't care or already have chosen one that works for them. E.g. the open source project linked above is part of an attempt to get social network style features into a reader: https://aaronparecki.com/2018/03/12/17/building-an-indieweb-..., and thus has a clear answer for "why not one of the ones that has been around for years", even if many users of feed readers aren't necessarily interested in that.

Thanks for the heads up, hadn't heard of that project before. I just took a look into it and well, I guess there's no problem with the name since mine is actually Monocle Reader (Monocle for short) and I've got the monoclereader.com domain. Might consider a rename down the line if this results in any conflict of course.

About your question, what do I offer that other established players don't have? It's a couple of things actually that I believe will make my reader unique:

1) Modern design

2) Simpler use and minimalistic interface

3) Cheaper paid subscriptions

4) Wide feature availability in the free tier

5) Pocket-like browser extensions for saving urls to a Read Later section

6) Aim at the regular internet user so it's really seamless to get up and running (not like aaronpk's Monocle for which you need to setup your own Microsub server and stuff)

7) Highly customizable: shortcuts, colors, layouts and other options

8) Add a tool to make a feed out of any website (like an integrated http://fetchrss.com/)

9) Save articles as PDF for offline reading or sharing

10) Probably offering an in-app reader but I also want to emphasis the importance of reading content on the actual website to show support and 'live the real experience' just how the creator intended to (and not just my parsed content, stealing traffic from his site)

It's possible that maybe Innoreader already has all this features? But still, I could still make a difference on how I present content, the general feeling you get when using the app and so on.

I'm really looking forward to your response since I'm trying to gather feedback and improve my reader as much as possible. Thanks!

PD: It's also my intention to lately approach and market this reader without making too much emphasis on the RSS thing, since people who don't know what that is instantly turn away, and just focus on the productivity and saving time benefits of using a reader like this (independent of how the tool technically gets the information)

Purely from my perspective, 7-9 might be interesting, I feel like the rest is probably not gonna differentiate that much from existing ones (although 4 of course depends on exactly what it amounts to).

I hope that material design is temporary...

What would you like better?

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