Google announced today that they will be shutting down Google Reader. This is something we have been expecting for some time: We have been working on a project called Normandy which is a feedly clone of the Google Reader API – running on Google App Engine. When Google Reader shuts down, feedly will seamlessly transition to the Normandy back end. So if you are a Google Reader user and using feedly, you are covered: the transition will be seamless.
Note 2: if you are a third party developer using the Google Reader API and would like to integrate with Normandy, please send an email to remi@feedly.com. We would love to keep the Google Reader ecosystem alive.
Update 22:24 PST: Bandwidth upgraded. New servers added. Welcome to all the new users.
Finding the right balance is really hard. This is one of the reasons it is important to have in the founding team of a startup someone who is focused on the product (ie fixing the leaks) and someone who is focused on the market (ie going somewhere). -Edwin
Hello feedlies! A quick heads up: We need to take the service offline tomorrow, Saturday Feb 23rd between 6:00pm PST and 10:00pm PST to make some changes to our database – to improve the performance going forward. If you need urgent access to your feedly during that time, you can use the Google Reader interface. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Live Updates
[18:44 PST] The scheduled maintenance started. We should be back online within 2 hours. Thank you for your patience. We will update this post as the status evolves.
[18:57 PST] Maintenance complete. The service should be back online. Have a great week end.
We just pushed out a new version of feedly for chrome. It impacts both the feedly and the feedly plus flavors.
Here is a quick overview of the change log:
Change #1: We fixed a series of session related bugs. As a result, you should start seeing fewer offline messages.
Change #2: We renamed Today. The new name is Highlights. This is to re-enforce that that section is a subset of the articles published on your feedly. The content has not changed yet, but it will. Arthur is doing some usability research to understand how people use that section and how we can simplify it while making it more useful. More soon.
Change #3: We renamed Latest. The new name is All. This is part of a bigger goal of better supporting people who read everything in their feedly and for whom All, unread counts, marking things as read and saving things for later is very important. Here again, Arthur is doing some UX research which will help us streamline some of the workflows power readers have put in place.
Our focus for the first part of this year is to improve the quality and performance of feedly across the board. This is a first step towards that direction. Please let us know if you have questions/suggestions.
We are in the process of upgrading some of our back end services to be able to handle more users faster. There will be some turbulence in the service over the next couple of days.
Between now and then, here are some work arounds:
1) If you have trouble logging into Feedly/Google Reader, please visit Google Reader and see if the authentication requires a captcha, if so login first to Google Reader and then go back and login to feedly.
2) If you have trouble loading feedly, please wait a few minutes and try to restart your browser or the iOS and Android app.
The service should feel a lot faster and more reliable by the end of this week. Thank you for your patience.
That’s the sort of design philosophy you’ll see in action as we continue to develop Vine. Of course, as the service evolves, you’re going to be an important part of its growth. We’ve been loving your feedback and look forward to getting more of it. After all, everyone needs an editor.
It all started in summer of last year. We started to see an increasing number of users asking us to integrate buffer’s sharing features into feedly.
At first, we did not understand why: we already had good integration with twitter and facebook. With hindsight, it is obvious: feedly users tend to read their feedly once or twice a day and love to share the best articles they find with their social networks to generate engagement and cultivate their digital persona. For users sharing a lot, the bursts end up overwhelming their followers.
In November 2012, we met with the buffer team and were seduced by their level of energy and their obsession with customer happiness. Enough that we decided to do a sprint and build a small prototype of what a feedly+buffer experience might look like.
Sharing an article on both Twitter and LinkedIn using Feedly+Buffer
After a couple of days of usage, I was in love!
My buffer is configured with my Twitter account, my facebook account and my LinkedIn account. The configuration lives in the buffer cloud, allowing me to access my accounts from lots of different apps and lots of different devices.
In the mornings, when I read through my favorites sources in feedly, I can easily share the best articles to both Twitter and LinkedIn (I consider those two networks as isomorphic. They are both related to my passions and professional life and sharing content allows me to spark interesting conversations and build up karma).
I have scheduled buffer to deliver articles to Twitter and LinkedIn every hour. So even though I am reading and sharing all my articles at around 5:45am in the morning, they get spread through the day, resulting in much better engagement.
My buffer delivery schedule
In December, we decided to take a couple of weeks and productize the prototype on both iOS and Chrome.
Working with the buffer team was awesome: I have rarely seen people with such a positive attitude and so focused on doing the right thing for the customer.
What we are announcing today, is the first step towards a long partnership: we have lots of great plans regarding adding more sharing options and making sharing more visual and impactful.
If you are curious on how to get started, here is a quick tutorial:
Go to www.bufferapp.com, create a free account and connect it with your social networks.
Go to iTunes and make sure that you have the latest version of feedly for iOS.
When you want to share an article on feedly for iOS (or feedly for Chrome), simply tap on the buffer icon, login, select the subset of networks you want to share with and that is it.
Over time, try to think about what would be the ideal delivery schedule for your workflow and your audience. You might need to upgrade to the buffer awesome plan to get more flexibility. I did.
