Newsblur is an RSS Reader like Google Reader. I’m using Newsblur now and paying $2 a month for the full version. It’s powerful, useful,and I can read my 400+ feeds fast. Plus, it’s open source.
Imagine his surprise when Google announced they were killing Reader and then Newsblur activity went stratospheric. That’s right, “his”, Newsblur is a one-person shop, everything is done by Samuel Clay.
I had been preparing for a black swan event like this for the last four years since I began NewsBlur. With the deprecation of their social features a year ago I knew it was only a matter of time before Google stopped supporting Reader entirely. I did not expect it to come this soon.
As the Storify history of the Reader-o-calypse, NewsBlur suffered a number of hurdles with the onslaught of new subscribers.
He describes the crush, the forced and rapid move to faster hosting, insane programming and tech issues, and
how everything is now under control and working fine. Clay is working 16 hour days doing what he loves.
It has also been a dream come true to receive accolades from the many who are trying NewsBlur for the first time and loving it. Since the announcement, NewsBlur has welcomed 5,000 new premium subscribers and 60,000 new users (from 50,000 users originally).
Over the next three months I’ll be working on:
Scaling, scaling, scaling
Launching the redesign (which you can preview)
Listening to all of you
I’m looking forward to it.