Everybody, just relax. Google Reader may only have three months to live, but Digg is swooping in to pick up the pieces. This afternoon, the Digg team announced that it plans to build an RSS reader “fit for the Internet of 2013.”
“We’ve heard people say that RSS is a thing of the past, and perhaps in its current incarnation it is, but as daily (hourly) users of Google Reader, we’re convinced that it’s a product worth saving,” wrote Digg’s Andrew McLaughlin. “So we’re going to give it our best shot.”
According to McLaughlin, the Digg team had “been planning to build a reader in the second half of 2013.” But after Google’s announcement on Wednesday, they’re moving the project to the front burner. “We’re going to build a reader, starting today,” he wrote. The Digg team even set up a splash page with a countdown clock leading up to Google Reader’s official demise.
McLaughlin says his team plans to “identify and rebuild the best of Google Reader’s features (including its API),” but does not plan to make its reader an exact copy of Google Reader (though quite a few commentors have ask for as much). Instead, the team aims to offset the “often overwhelming signals” broadcast by other news aggregation outlets and social networks, including “Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit and Hacker News.”
For now, the Digg team is taking suggestions from Web users about what they’d like to see in a Digg Reader. Based on a quick survey of the comments on McLaughlin’s post, it’s clear that most users want something that’s “clean and simple,” with as few bells and whistles as possible. “Simple, simple, simple please,” wrote one commenter. “Just make it do what Reader did and no magazines, etc etc nonsense. Just feeds, folders, and thats it.”
What would you like to see in a Digg Reader? Let us know your thoughts below.
