As much as my life would have been easier this year without the decision to close Google Reader (I think this is what they call #firstworldproblems), it's a good thing that they didn't change their mind and decide to not shut it down at the last minute.
Too many people have invested too much time in creating viable alternatives to Google Reader, and un-discontinuing it would have thrown a massive spanner in the works. I probably would have stayed with an alternative out of spite.
I was thinking about this last night and even had Google kept it going I'd have stayed with Feedbin. Kill it once and there's always the possibility they'll try and do it again.
Feedbin is a small outfit with a fraction of the resources that Google has but they care about RSS reading, something Google clearly don't whatever they say or do now.
I'll happily pay a couple of bucks a month to support someone with a commitment to a product I'm interested in.
For me at least, having Reader shut down made me realize that depending on products delivered for free is ultimately unsustainable - I have no control over those services and if I can't figure out how that company is making money from me, there's little justification for that provider to continue providing that service, unmodified, for perpetuity. Self-hosted services are the only ones that you can truly rely on.
I'm hoping I'm not the only one that has come to this conclusion.
Unfortunately, the fact that you're paying for a product isn't a particularly better signal that it's sustainable, unless you individually can cover the costs of running that product. I've had for-pay services I used discontinued because they weren't profitable or because they were bought by another company and deprecated (Slicehost) even though they were profitable.
It seems like a better strategy is to assume that no service or company is forever, and demand reasonable ways to export your data or setup in the event they shut down (and time to do that export before they turn off.)
If it applies to almost anything, what's the purpose behind it? Is it just kind of a lighthearted way to remind oneself to feel grateful and that daily problems aren't so big in the scheme of things? #AtLeastIHaveShelterAndPlentyToEat doesn't have the same ring to it.
Or maybe now it's mostly used preemptively against ridicule? When complaining about something, if you add #firstworldproblems it makes it impossible to accuse you of whining.
Is it just kind of a lighthearted way to remind oneself to feel grateful and that daily problems aren't so big in the scheme of things?
This is the way I've always interpreted it, which is why I thought these videos ("First World Problems Read by Third World People") were so weird and off the mark:
you've raised an interesting method to disrupt new-comers - by faking an end-of-life announcement, then "listen to the community" and reinstate a product, you could effectively make the market harder to enter!
Too many people have invested too much time in creating viable alternatives to Google Reader, and un-discontinuing it would have thrown a massive spanner in the works. I probably would have stayed with an alternative out of spite.