And facebook integration? Seriously I think it is quickly becoming the obvious sign of a douchey website. Not saying that facebook integration isn't a useful feature in some sites, but nowadays when I see a site and it has a whole row of social network integration buttons it just looks desperate and exploitative, like the site cares more about using the audience to gain traction than to provide a good service.
And the offhand dismissal of Facebook integration? Are you kidding? You bitch about having to sign up to use site while in the same breath complain that the OP is providing too many (convenient) ways for users to sign up for the service I'm sad this comment has so many up votes.
Your unhappiness with my comment shows that you care more about what is good for your application than what is good for the user.
No matter how good your application actually is, with that kind of attitude I just can't trust you.
Your second sentence is a non sequitur btw. I'm not looking for easier ways to sign up, I am looking not to sign up at all. If a mugger provided me with convenient credit card and paypal options for how to give him my money, I wouldn't be happy with that either.
One can have a 'junk' account with a provider an use it for stuff like this, if needed.
Edit: Having said that, I agree with your premise that a sign in should not be mandatory to using the site.
What? I completely disagree. I'd much rather have other options for sign-in, especially to get around the issue you're complaining about of having to sign up to check it out.
Also, I didn't like the bar at the bottom of the screen. If feels strange and also gets in the way. Personally I feel that the design could still use some fine tuning.
It's kinda like a sales assistant that rushes up to ask if you're finding everything before you've gotten halfway from the door to the shelves...give me a chance to indulge my curiosity first, eh?
- No we dont get paid for listing feeds. I'd love that because it would be a great business model.
- Sorry if the predefined sources in the catalog are not what you are looking for. Since I am German I do not have a complete overview of i.e. US-American politics blogs. I definitely was not biased when choosing them. I just used Technorati's top lists and looked for properly formatted feeds.
- The layout is not yet optimized for touch devices at all. Apologies. I hope I'll find the time to work on it soon...
- I decided to use Meebo because their sharing function does a good job. If you dont like the bar at the bottom, feel free to hide it (arrow icon at the right).
- You have to sign on before using it because I (and my legal counsels) see copyright issues when they look at my product vision and feature roadmap. If you re logged in it's private consumption. I won't display third party content publicly.
- Logging in with your social network account just simplifies registration. We dont get any personal data or anything from these auth services, just an ID (which is in some cases an email address).
Feel free to post any suggestions for feeds or features, other ideas, or just criticism here http://support.goodnoows.com I really try to do this very agile and user-focused...
Cheers
Probably got paid to.
Do we want to comment on your site rather than the blog post itself? Probably not. Hacker News is an exception because there is a community of like-minded people here; that will not be the case on a generic aggregator. Solving the community issue is more important than dumping a ton of social features on it.
There are some enticing possibilities around RSS readers, but I think they mostly revolve around the incorporation of other ideas into them. Even a modest follower of RSS is going to hit information saturation after 20ish blogs, so a recommendation and ranking service would definitely be useful.
I looked over the screenshots and they didn't wow me. I would have been willing to try it, like the above poster said, if I could simply access the reader and add a feed to see what it was like. I'd understand that my settings weren't saved until I signed up.
1) I need OPML import. Before that's there, all I can really do is play with the interface to see if I like it; I imagine this will be the case for anyone who already uses a lot of RSS feeds. (Other users new to the concept, on the other hand, would be fine getting started with the sample feeds given.)
2) The Meebo toolbar needs to go. I get that social networking is a major focus, but adding an IM client to the interface is not helpful for anyone but iPad users (and even that's doubtful). If you must have it, I suggest detecting the user agent and removing it for anyone but them, or at least giving the option to disable it entirely in the options (instead of just "hiding" it).
Otherwise, it's a great start and I'd love to see where it's going. :)
I'll give it a proper try when they can import OPML.
