Digg Promises To Pick Up Google Reader’s Slack

Google announced on Wednesday that it would be shutting down its once popular Google Reader app on July 1. The notice of the platform’s closure shocked many longtime Google Reader fans who have relied on the platform to deliver their favorite RSS-based newsfeeds for many years.

In anticipation of that closure, the team at Digg has promised to pick up where Google Reader has left off.

In a post on the official Digg blog, a notice reads:

“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. So we’re going to give it our best shot. We’ve been planning to build a reader in the second half of 2013, one that, like Digg, makes the Internet a more approachable and digestible place. After Google’s announcement, we’re moving the project to the top of our priority list. We’re going to build a reader, starting today.”

The Digg team does have experience in the News delivery space. The team at Betaworks, the current owners of Digg, began building the News.me platform in 2010. Much like a users RSS feed collections, News.me is based on collecting real-time web post data from around the internet.

The Betaworks team hopes to utilize whatever it can get out of the Google Reader API and other internet RSS advances in an attempt to build a better tool for website content aggregation.

Betaworks and the Digg team hope that by gaining an understanding of the features users came to enjoy with Google Reader and then adding social integration that they can create a worthwhile product.

Betaworks is not going in alone. They are asking users to give input to the company for the type of technology they want implemented with the Digg reader.

Speaking of RSS troubles, Neal Campbell at SocialNewsDaily quotes RSS co-creator Dave Winer:

“I didn’t think the mailbox approach to news was right. Who cares how many unread items there are. I like the river of news approach and I have a very fine set of rivers that keep me well supplied with news and podcasts.”

You can get on the Digg reader waiting list byclicking here.