The State of FeedLounge
It’s been 180 days since we announced the initial alpha release of FeedLounge.
When we first announced the alpha release we had been coding furiously on the project for several months, and expected to be going into beta within a month - maybe two at the outside. 180 days later we’re still not to our beta release, but we are much closer to being able to being able to offer FeedLounge as a viable and reliable service.
Our alpha release has been invaluable; it has given us the information we need to make our beta release successful. Unfortunately, the alpha has also enjoyed a longer life than we’d originally planned.
Summary
This post is a long one. In it, we will cover some of the issues that have delayed FeedLounge’s public release, talk about the business model (paid vs. free, and when) and announce our beta (public) release date.
Technical Delays
As previously discussed in some depth, we’ve run into all sorts of trouble with scalability. When we began this project, I was working on the interaction design and saw a web based feed reader as “just another web application” - I was dead wrong (Scott already had a better idea about the scale we were looking at, but even he was surprised by what we found). The feed refreshing is a significantly higher load on the system than the actual users are - more like a search engine than a webmail system. We quickly found this out, and it fundamentally changed the way we had to approach the project.
With our initial group of alpha users, we took down the shared server we were using in about a month. Moving to a dedicated box (with 100 more users) bought us another month before the dedicated box became so bogged down it was unusable. After several weeks of effectively being “down” due to performance issues on the dedicated box, we brought FeedLounge up on our current hardware in our new data center - the hardware and rack space we will be using for our beta release.
However, the new hardware alone was not going to be enough. We also had to go back and rewrite major parts of the application - tuning them for scalability instead of for user facing features. Cool features are useless if the performance is so bad people can’t use them. We also decided to switch database engines from MySQL to PostgreSQL.
JavaScript debugging is also as much art as it is science, especially when you’re working on thousands of lines of code that need to work on Firefox, IE and Safari. We knew we were taking on this burden, but sometimes it seems to drag out forever to get one little thing working.
We have a few more optimizations we plan to make before our wider release, however we now feel we can successfully scale the service and have projected hardware needs based on real life metrics. While our alpha phase has been long, it has also been a great success.
Business Delays
Wether you want to or not, you can’t run a business in a vacuum. We’ve had a number of interesting conversations with various companies, each of which take time away from development as we explore possibilities. One of the conversations we are still engaged in should allow us to offer our free service sooner rather than later.
We’ve also had a few delays due to our service providers. We had a couple weeks of delays getting out temporary alpha server up, and we were one of the first customers in our provider’s new data center - which naturally resulted in a few delays.
While these delays did add up to a month or so, they certainly are not the reason we haven’t launched our beta release yet. They are, however, part of the overall picture.
Personal Delays
When it became clear (due to scalability issues) that we were not going to be able to get to our alpha release as fast as we thought, we ran into problems in other areas; both Scott and I have mortgages that have to be paid each month. When we realized that the launch date was going to be a bit further off than we had originally expected, we had to scale back our work on FeedLounge a little and take on projects that would help pay the bills. Unfortunately, one of these projects snowballed and took up nearly twice the time it was supposed to - which, of course, caused additional delays.
These delays have been expensive to FeedLounge in terms of public expectation and to Scott and me financially. We’ve invested in the FeedLounge hardware, and are paying the monthly co-location and bandwidth costs from our savings.
During my trip to the Bay Area, we even met with some venture capital firms and talked with some angel investors to try to alleviate the personal financial issues, but nothing has materialized so far.
Competition, Why FeedLounge can Succeed
While we’ve been in our closed alpha testing, a number of players have jumped into the web feed reader game. The most notable entries are Google and Yahoo! (through the new Yahoo! mail beta) who are, of course, making their feed readers free. A number of smaller players have also popped up, the space is certainly growing quickly (as expected).
While this competition hurts FeedLounge in some ways, it is helping in others.
When we first announced the FeedLounge alpha, there were very few options available. Judging from the beta sign-ups we received, we could have had hundreds of thousands of users within the first month of service. If we’d had to grow at that rate, we would almost certainly have failed. Now that there are other options out there, we can change our release plans slightly, with a more certainty that we will be able to succeed.
FeedLounge was created to be a powerful feed reader, capable of satiating the true informnivore. So far, the offerings from Google and Yahoo! have taken a different approach - catering to users with a small number of feeds.
The RSS reader included with Yahoo’s beta Web mail service is designed to appeal to the average RSS user, which according to Yahoo’s internal research subscribes to about six or seven feeds.
While they or others will certainly work on more powerful offerings in the future, we believe that the FeedLounge experience is superior right now and we’re confident that our extensive “future” list will continue to make FeedLounge very compelling.
Paid and Free Accounts
Our original plan for FeedLounge was to offer both paid and free accounts at the time of our first public launch. We’ve had to change our plans since then, and the initial beta release will be for paid subscribers only.
We will be growing the paid service organically. The income from our paying customers will allow us to add hardware and devote time to both scalability and new feature development.
As previously discussed, we are having conversations with another company that we hope will help us bring our free version online in the near term. If that doesn’t work out, we’ll keep looking at other options, including some creative ideas we have on the back burner.
Public Release Date
Our public beta release will be: Monday, January 16, 2006
We’ve got a good bit of work to do still, but we’ll be ready. 
Feedlounge switched from MySQL to PostgreSQL for good
Feedlounge, the upcoming web-based feeds reader on steroids mentioned a while back that they switched their db-server from MySQL to PostgreSQL and by doing so, they saved alot of space and reduced their restore times dramatically.
Some of the reason…
I’ve been one of the fortunate alpha testers. I’m curious how all this affects alpha testers. It sounds like there likely won’t be a free version available at the time of the public release. If that’s the case and I don’t become a paying subscriber by January 16th, will I lose my access to FeedLounge?
The State of FeedLounge
Alex has posted a moderately detailed article explaining The State of FeedLounge. For any newcomers who don’t know what FeedLounge is, it’s a web based feed aggregator, not unlike BlogLines. But FeedLounge is a next-generation web service that look…
Luke, this was actually covered in the e-mail you responded to in order to join the alpha:
Of course, you can decide that you want to support us and start paying right away if you like.
FeedLounge Beta Date Announced
Alex and I have officially announced the beta release date of FeedLounge. Read it here.
It will be a huge flurry of activity in a push to the release. More code, more infrastructure, less sleep
…
I will pay most anything reasonable that you clowns ask of me. I’m an addict.
Alex, I guess I didn’t anticipate that “these features” would equal “all features”. I certainly was warned, and you have every right to enforce it that way. However, it’d be swell if the termination of alpha accounts was delayed until alpha testers had the option of a free account.
Luke, as noted in this post, our intention was to have the free version ready at the same time that we did our public release. Unfortunately, many things have changed since that time. We’ll look at some options for this, but I can tell you with certainty that you’ll have free access until March 16th.
Still looking forward to it coming out Alex. I (now) know a lot of what you’ve been having to deal with and you both seem to be doing a great job with it. I wouldn’t worry about the yahoo/google thing, as you mention they seem to be catering to a different kind of user. Because of that, I don’t think anyone that would benefit from your service would have trouble seeing why they should use feedlounge instead of google/yahoo.
Oh, and I imagine you would have mentioned this, but out of curiosity, have you decided on your price points yet for when you hit public beta?
We’ll have details like that closer to the launch.
I’ve enjoyed alpha testing Feedlounge, but I can’t imagine paying for it in its current incarnation. I’m not saying it isn’t a great product - it is very well designed. It is just that it still can’t compete with a desktop application like NetNewsWire. If you have to switch between computers a lot, the cost of paying for Feedlounge should be worth it for you. But I find NNW to be an overall better experience. (NNW also promises to offer better synchronization features in the near future, as a result of their recent aquisition by newsgator.)
What I had really hoped is that a tag-based feed reader would help me manage the large number of feeds I have to handle, but I found that the tagging system implemented for feeds (as opposed to individual posts) made the list of feeds longer rather than shorter (each item is now listed multiple times, since tags are treated as folder-like entities). I suppose this is one of the end-user features which hasn’t been worked on as the backend is improved. When this is fixed I might consider paying for the service.
Feature requests should be made in the forums.
I made this feature request several times in the forums. This was just a public comment about what I think is needed for FeedLounge to succeed.
Try to stay on topic there, huh Kerim? Besides, your feature request makes no sense.
The State of FeedLounge
The State of FeedLounge is an update from Alex King regarding where development of this highly anticipated online feed reader sits. It appears that the beta will be launched on January 16, 2006 and only paying members will have the ability to use it. …
I’ll be looking forward to the beta, depending on how much it costs. I’m a mid-range users in your terms, I read about 40 feeds, and its all about whether FeedLounge offers enough of an improvement to move me away from Google Reader.
I want this beta now!!!! ;-D I’m so desperate
Greg. You’re right. Rather than continuing this discussion here, I’ve tried to elaborate my ideas about how Feedlounge tagging should work in a post on my own blog.
Hundreds of thousands of users in the first month? That’s very confident, unless you were getting 3 thousand+ beta signups per day with no drop off. I’m genuinely curious how you extrapolated this number. (My point of reference is the growth of WP.com vs. beta signups.)
Any way, best of luck with the evolution of FL, it’s been interesting watching how the product has developed in public. Thank you for being so candid about everything. If there is any way I can help let me know.
Paying for this kind of app isn’t a problem, I’m currently using bloglines and am frequently frustrated with it. Will there, however be a “demo” of feedlounge available for those considering signing up. As I said, i’m willing to pay, but I’d like to see what i’m getting before I hand over my cash!
i NEED this beta now!!!!
FeedLounge annouces BETA
Alex King’s FeedLounge service announced it will enter public BETA on January 16, 2006! This is exciting news and I wish Alex an
Matt,
Hundreds of thousands wasn’t confidence, but we did have to be prepared for a flash crowd to come join up (in a free scenario), take down the infrastructure and leave. Then no one would stick around…
Our estimated numbers are much smaller.
And there will be a demo available in some form.
We’ll be announcing more details about everything as we get it all finalized.
FeedLounge Scalability
There is a great conversation going on about web applications and scalability, with FeedLounge as an example.
A few months back, there was a meme going around talking about how cheap it was to build a web based application/service/company compared to…
Paid ONLY for an initial beta release. And no time-scale or forseeable future for a free version… on dear.
I would love to use this site as I think it’s the definitive solution I’ve been looking for in a RSS reader. Application-style in the form accessible from anywhere in the world. However, I’m not paying for a web-service that I’ve not even tested. Very disappointed indeed.
Thanks for the update. I’ve been really pleased with the alpha releases. Feedlounge has definately become my feedreader of choice. Normally, I probably wouldn’t pay for something like this but being able to use it during the alpha has definately convinced me to purchase a paid subscription once this thing goes live. I look forward to what is to come; keep up the great work.
More details will emerge as we get closer to Jan 16. Suffice it to say that no one is asking you to pay for something that you have not had a chance to try.
Gotcha, I understand now.
Good luck with the finances, and thanks for being so open.
I look forward to trying it out. A 15 or 30 day trial should be enough to decide it if is heroin enough to be worth paying for, or if I would rather stay with my current free client and server options.
Could there be a way to pay for an account now, to ensure that we’re included in the beta?
I place my thoughts here
Thanks for the offer Joe, unfortunately we don’t have our payment system in place yet.
What is the possibility of having a 1 day trial account around beta time to try-before-we-buy? If this turns out to be as good as it looks, I’d be a paying customer for life, assuming I get to try it first
Well, I wasn’t in the alpha, so I don’t know what it’s like. I’m pleased you’re going semi-public fairly soon. It’s highly unlikely I’ll ever pay for a feed-reader, so I’ll be waiting for the free version before I even try it.
I have yet to find a feed-reader which works for me. FeedLounge looks the most promising, but its only real competition is Bloglines, which is ugly, and performs weirdly in Firefox - in other words, the bar is low.
Feedreaders are only going to become more and more popular in the future, and I very much doubt FeedLounge will be the only good one by the end of 2006. With that in mind, you’d better hope your free featureset isn’t too limited, otherwise I’ll be (once again) looking elsewhere.
Although I am excited about the Feed Lounge finally going live, I think having a paid version would be a mistake. One would only have to look at the other feed readers to see what I mean.
Most feed readers (online ones) generally are free. I’ve used over half a dozen different feed readers, of which half were online. Most of those were free, and many users may default to those instead of using your service (as Google and Yahoo, and several others have excellent feed readers).
I think what you should do instead is make the feed reader available to everyone but place advertisments on the sides. I would recommend either designing your own ad system or using anothers, but this way you would build an audience with your technology while at the same time generate revenue to keep it up.
Anyways, thanks for developing the technology, and I may check it out next year (I’ll have to put it in my calendar). God bless!
Novedades de FeedLounge
Como ya les había comentado hace un tiempo atrás, uno de mis lectores de feeds favoritos es FeedLounge. La verdad que la experiencia hasta ahora ha sido mas que positiva y solo ha tenido en un par de oportunidades fallas en sus servicios pero tan …
Only paid subscribers?? How can i pay for something that i haven’t tried with so many free competitors around?
I wanna try it so i can decide freely..that’s not a problem paying for it but i want to try it before..
Can you create a test account so we can run a test drive?
Bye and remember..we’re watching you!
This has already been addressed in the comments above:
can you also address the issue of long term development? I was using a slick feed reader that eventually gave up adding features and fixing bugs.
Sure, I exported my subscriptions, but it was messy and the whole experience was a waste of time.
Hashim,
I don’t know what to tell you, other than the fact that we have been developing on and in FeedLounge for over a year now, and we have no intentions of stopping after our public release. This is not a pet project of ours, it is a business partnership to bring a feed reader to market. The market will decide how long we are relevant, but we don’t intend to stop creating features.
Our feature list is only 13% complete, according to Tasks. I’m sure that we will think of more as well.
Goodbye Bloglines, Hello Feedlounge?
Here’s hoping I can ditch Bloglines in 7 days!
It’s completely doing my head in. I click on an item with 1 or 3 or 15 unread items, and it displays…none and marks the feed as fully read. Grrr. And there are unread feeds if I select …
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