So Long Bloglines
I can’t say that I’m surprised by the announcement that Bloglines will be shutting down. Once upon a time, the service was one of the first to offer a web-based RSS reader, as opposed to a local client that polled RSS feeds for updates. As someone who uses quite a number of machines, that was a tremendous step forward when it came to RSS aggregation, and I signed up pretty early in the lifecycle.
However, that was then, and this is now. While Bloglines started out somewhat cutting edge, even offering such add-ons as a link blog, etc., it really pretty much stagnated over the years. Apparently, it has even had plenty of stability issues as well, but I had already moved away from it by the time it got real bad. In the mean time, other web-based RSS readers hit the market, most importantly Google Reader, and they kept right on adding features and values where Bloglines sat still.
In the Web 2.0 world, sitting still is death. No matter how nice your service is, or how many loyal users you have, eventually someone is going to do what you do, better.
Seems like that statement might apply to many areas of life, not just tech startups. I can think of plenty of career situations where the same thing holds true.
Bloglines was my first RSS reader (online for sure, but perhaps over all). I was never impressed with it, but at the time it was the best there was. I can’t say it will be missed, but it is a classic internet service. Did you ever use the RSS service called Rojo? I switched away from Bloglines to it, but it was doomed from the beginning.
I never used Rojo, I stuck with Bloglines until it really started to get instable, and made the switch to Google Reader. I know there were a bunch out there at one time, but not quite as many now.