Peter, can't you build a competitor to FeedInformer? ;-) I hate that you sold out to a company that could care less about the product. They obviously have no desire to keep things functioning or keep users happy, let alone gaining any new ground and making it an even better product.
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Unhappy with the new owner...
27 posts-
Posted 16 years ago #
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I completely agree. I can't tell if there is actually anyone who works on this, or does anything with it, or really cares one way or another.
Posted 16 years ago # -
buy it !
Posted 16 years ago # -
Just to clear it up, if I'd wanted to keep running Feed Informer, I wouldn't have sold it, so no, there won't be a competitor to Feed Informer developed by me.
Posted 16 years ago # -
Peter, I have no qualms with the fact that you sold it. The issue I have is that the new owner's simply could care less about the product they purchased from you. I'm sure there were folks out there interested in buying it from you. I'm sure even Google could benefit from this service being integrated with their FeedBurner acquisition.
If the new owners cared half as much as you did for this application then I would be happy, but the fact is we haven't heard one iota from the new owners and service has become very spotty. I would gladly pay 5x or 6x what the annual rate is for my plan here on FeedInformer if it actually worked and new features were rolled out. My site depends on it at this point and many of the pages on my site have been built around FeedInformer. Unfortunately there isn't a good alternative. FeedBurner does an ok job, but it doesn't have anywhere near the extra features that FeedInformer does. I have to hand it to Google on one thing, it is reliable, fast and you don't have to worry about Google going out of business. The new owners here have me worried about the future of FeedInformer and quite honestly they have left a terrible taste in my mouth and as soon as I can find a viable alternative I'll be saying goodbye to FeedInformer.
Sad.
Posted 16 years ago # -
I just wanted to note that the new owners have certainly kept up development on the system. They've implemented a few things that I did not get around to. For example, Flash based digests, which are very useful to people on social networks, as well as image based digests. They've also implemented PDF digests, and I believe some form of statistics are on the horizon too.
Regarding Google.. Google were certainly not an interested party at the time. Indeed, I know there were FeedBurner staff using Feed Digest, so if there was any latent interest, it would have worked its way through the system.
Anyway, apologies if you feel a bit let down by it all, but the new owners are not doing a bad job. They are just more focused on the bigger picture, rather than helping individual users in depth as I was. This is probably why I didn't make much money at it, so I have no grounds to complain about their technique :)
Posted 16 years ago # -
Peter, I'm not sure I agree that the new owners are running things as well as you give them credit for. Take this for example:
"Upgrades currently unavailable. Return later."
If a company was interested in making money and keeping up with the overall needs of users then upgrades to an account would work, yet the above has been on the account upgrade page for several months now.
I have yet to see one post in the forums from the new owners...why didn't they just get rid of the forums if they could care less about interacting with users on this level (which IMO is crucial to a business such as this).
If the new owners would at least make a post or update detailing that they are here and actively keeping the site running then I would back off a little and let them do their job...but honestly from what I've seen it is a job that you're doing and it isn't even your project anymore. You're the one stuck with dealing with support issues, not the new owners from what I can tell. I appreciate you supporting a project that is no longer yours, but in reality the new owners should be doing a much better job at this than they currently are (or lack of).
Posted 16 years ago # -
Peter always provided excellent personal service, which, apart from the quality of his product, ensured that not only would I use Feed Digest but regularly recommend it to my readership. I trust the new owners will continue that tradition, and I would like to thank Peter for his work and friendly support.
The problem that I have been encountering is that the new service sometimes does not accept some, but not all, RSS feeds from Google News and Yahoo! News. The fact that some feeds work and some don't indicates to me that perhaps there is a bug. Can Feed Informer please address this matter so that the content I place on my site will accept all of these news feeds, rather than about half of them? Thank you, and good luck Peter.
Posted 16 years ago # -
I /believe/ some sections of Google and Yahoo's news sites have blocked Feed Digest from reading their feeds for some reason. One thing that appears to work as a workaround is to add .nyud.net:8090 to the hostname in each case, as it then passes the feed through a proxy which isn't blocked. Quite why Google would block something reading feeds that only reads one feed a maximum of twice an hour I don't know(!)
Posted 16 years ago # -
Adding ".nyud.net:8090" to the domain works a treat, e.g.
http://news.google.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/
As ever, Peter, you are a star!
Posted 16 years ago # -
Re: adding ".nyud.net:8090" to the domain name -- Woot! It works!! 88 miles per hour!!!
Thank you, Peter!
Posted 16 years ago # -
Peter - understand entirely your position, but could you provide some guidance on the basic question of service - namely, how do we continue using this service if our subscription is about to expire? Many of us have developed sites that depend on this service now. Basically, we want to renew but can't. Any suggestions at all - whether some way to contact the new owners directly or an alternate service?
Posted 16 years ago # -
I can't speak for the new owners, but as far as I'm led to believe, they are not sticking to the old way things were billed. As such, all existing members /should/ be able to use the system for free. However, I think they will be looking to implement a new account scheme in the future, which will be split into paid and free. In any case, I don't think any users are being deactivated whether their accounts "expire" or not.. that is, nothing is happening on expiration.
Posted 16 years ago # -
OK - thanks, Peter - that's righteous. I can understand that they may need time to figure out their direction. As long as we are not unceremoniously deactivated, I wish them the best with their new business plans.
Posted 16 years ago # -
Why the hell doesn't the Contact Us page have any actual contact information??? I HATE companies that do this.
Posted 16 years ago # -
Hey, Peter - As I said in my previous post, I can understand your point about the new owners dwelling on the big picture for now. As long as the feeds don't expire until we get a chance to resubscribe, that seems fine. My feeds are all working OK. But I have a follow-up question: If I try to add another feed to my account, will that muck things up - in other words: will the existing feeds stop working, will my account be terminated, or anything that could jeopardize the current OK situation?
Thanks again!Posted 16 years ago # -
rusgom: Almost certainly not, based on the code as it was when I last saw it.
Posted 16 years ago # -
Thanks again, Peter. You are a good man!
Posted 16 years ago # -
Hi i'm newbie here..thanks for the information
Posted 13 years ago # -
Yes I would definitely like to agree and say thank you very much for the new information here!! :)
Posted 13 years ago #
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