Ping.it, an Oslo, Norway-based startup, has been around since 2009 and has experimented with a number of business models, but it launched in public beta this week as a content discovery service. Ping.it’s main feature is “probes,” which it describes on its blog as “small apps which go out and retrieve information from across the Web on behalf of the user. They can be created, edited, shared and subscribed to – all by Ping.it users.”

“I see Ping.it as a new step forward in content discovery using elements from traditional RSS Readers and social media,” founder Marius Lian told me. “Google Reader was discontinued for a reason – time to move on.”

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How consumer media will change in 2013
• Examining the rise of crowd labor platforms in 2012
• The state of cross-platform media measurement

A theme that comes through in both surveys is that RSS users still often rely on email to share content. Of the 8,600 Google Reader users who responded to Digg’s most recent survey, nearly 80 percent say they share news via email.

That’s not particularly surprising since Google Reader got rid of many of its social features in 2011 and no longer allows for easy posting to Facebook or Twitter, while there is still a Google Reader keyboard shortcut to email an RSS post. Still, email as a method of sharing also pops up in Feedly’s survey, which got responses from over 7,000 current Feedly users (many of whom likely once used Google Reader). That’s not to say, though, that email sharing is ideal: Feedly says a common refrain in its survey results is that users want to “remove friction from the type of sharing which is currently implemented using email.”

Respondents also told Feedly that they want to “be able to target smaller groups of people (wife, family, team, subset of friends with similar interest) and not pollute their Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn timelines.” This is actually the logic behind Google+ Circles, but it would seem Google+ isn’t cutting it here: Feedly says “people requesting this feature are savvy sharers who [already heavily use] Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and email – almost evenly.” In other words, the results suggest Google+ isn’t fulfilling users’ desire to target small groups. And 78 percent of respondents to Feedly’s survey said they “want support for threaded conversations (i.e., this is more about triggering interesting private conversations than simply sharing information).”

Feedly says that it is working on a beta with some of these features and will roll them out in a few weeks. Digg, meanwhile, says its beta RSS reader will be released in June. And it seems likely that that product will be paid. Digg notes that “We’re not sure how pricing might work, but we do know that we’d like our users to be our customers, not our product. So when we asked survey participants whether or not they would be willing to pay, we were pleased to see that over 40 percent said yes.”

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Report: NoSQL Databases – Providing Extreme Scale and Flexibility
• The fourth quarter of 2012 in mobile
• The fourth quarter of 2012 in cleantech

One stat that sticks out is that 80 percent of respondents check Google Reader “many times a day,” and 40 percent subscribe to over 100 feeds. “This is a product for power users,” Digg concludes, “and we’ll need to make sure we have some serious infrastructure in place to support that kind of usage for launch.”

The survey also finds that most respondents use Google Reader for both work and non-work stuff, suggesting that while this is definitely a product beloved by journalists, they aren’t the only ones using it. (In fact, more respondents said they use Google Reader for “play” alone than for work only.)

And while over 40 percent of respondents haven’t actually switched over to a replacement RSS service yet (maybe they’re waiting for Google to change its mind), it appears that those who have either switched or are now testing another reader are going with Feedly, both on desktop and mobile:

That’s borne out by the fact that Feedly added three million new users in the first two weeks following the announcement of Google Reader’s death. And while Digg seems pleased to note that it’s early and people “have yet to settle” on a Reader alternative, Feedly’s success thus far may be a stumbling block for companies that take awhile to launch their product. On the other hand, if many people are sticking with Google Reader until the bitter end, companies like Digg have at least a couple of months to roll out an alternative.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Report: NoSQL Databases – Providing Extreme Scale and Flexibility
• The 2013 task management tools market
• How to deliver the next-generation web experience

The iPhone app is remaining paid because it already supports services other than Google Reader, Rizzi wrote: “I’m currently working on integrating Feedbin and adding support for standalone/local RSS (still experimental). You’ll get these features with the next update (3.1) which should be ready soon. That’s just the beginning, the plan is to add more services you can choose from in the next weeks and months.”

The Mac and iPad apps don’t support other RSS services yet, so they’ll be free until they get an update and “add all the features of the iPhone version, including all sharing and syncing services.”

I use Reeder to read RSS feeds on my iPad, and I recommend checking it out.

Reeder isn’t the only RSS service making changes: Feedly announced Monday that it’s added three million new users in the two weeks since Google announced it was killing off Google Reader, and rolled out big updates to its mobile apps.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Development strategies for the app-developer community
• A near-term outlook for the mobile app marketplace
• Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continues

Mobile updates

Today Feedly is rolling out a new version of Feedly Mobile, with improved discovery, search and sharing features, for iOS and Android devices. Users can search over 50 million feeds and can browse by topic. “The more you use Feedly to search, categorize and follow your favorite feeds, the better our search and discovery will become,” the company writes in its blog post announcing the changes. There’s also a new Must-Reads section. These same search and discovery features will be added to Feedly’s Chrome, Firefox and Safari apps later today.

For former Google Reader users, Feedly has added a new title-only view to its mobile apps “to make scanning of headlines more efficient” (and more similar to Google Reader’s condensed view). The company had already added that list view to its web apps.

Finally, there are some new sharing options on mobile: In addition to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, mobile users can now share to Google+ and Buffer (a site that manages sharing to multiple social networking services) and can save articles to Pocket and Instapaper. Those features were already available on Feedly’s web versions.

What’s next: A paid premium version and a service for publishers

Cofounder Moutran told me in an email that “a significant proportion” of its users say they’d be willing to pay for Feedly. The company plans to launch a premium, subscription-based version of the service later this year. It will include features like better Evernote and Dropbox integration.

In addition, Moutran said, the company sees Feedly as a “marketplace that facilitates the discovery, consumption and sharing of great content…We have been working with publishers, and intend to offer an easy way for our users to discover, purchase and access premium content.”

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• Carrier IQ and the continued erosion of operator trust
• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro

Myth: Google could have sold or open-sourced Reader

Reality: De-tangling Reader from Google’s infrastructure was just not worth the effort.

With companies like Digg declaring they will build an alternative, you have to wonder if Google could have salvaged its goodwill among Reader fans by spinning it off. After all, the company is frugal by its own admission, so an “exit with benefits” would have to be more appealing than an outright shutdown. It wouldn’t be the first time either, as SketchUp was spun off last year. The difference is that SketchUp sold for a lot more than Reader probably would, if rumors of $90 million are to be believed.

Where SketchUp was a desktop app and a recent acquisition, Reader is a relatively old web service, one we can assume is deeply ingrained in Google’s systems. This would include services like login and the fundamental feed crawling that would be difficult to detangle into a standalone, open-source product. Exporting all that data to another company would again open the company up to more legal and privacy risks than it presumably would care to deal with. It’s possible users would have to explicitly agree to the arrangement, which would damage the value of the deal, and it’s also possible Google would be lambasted if it chose the “wrong company” and would be blamed for any subsequent mishandling of Reader.

Instead, Google has provided the alternative of a straightforward data export, meaning users can migrate to other services in a matter of minutes. If the primary reason to sell would be goodwill among users, the data export probably serves that purpose better.

Myth: Google cares more about Orkut than Reader

Reality: Orkut is on the way out too.

“We need to focus. Keep the self-driving cars, magic glasses, laptop, handheld OS, and Brazilian social network. Ditch the feed reader.”

— Pinboard (@Pinboard) March 14, 2013

Four-thousand retweets can’t be wrong, right? Surely if Orkut is still alive and kicking, then Google must care more about that nine-year-old social network that never took over the world, but somehow gained a foothold in Brazil. The reality is that Reader was purged as part of an overall “spring cleaning” effort that began a few months after Larry Page took the reins in 2011, promising “more wood behind fewer arrows.” If you think Orkut doesn’t fit into that pithy worldview, you’re probably right, and Google probably does want to shut it down. It’s just a matter of timing and shutting things down in the right sequence, as you can’t just pull the plug on a large product overnight.

Another issue is that Orkut, in particular, is sensitive, as it’s the closest thing in Google’s catalog to Plus. Google’s already closed down other social products – Wave, Jaiku, and Buzz – so there’s still a perception that Plus is “yet another experiment” Google will probably tear down in a year or two. In fact, Plus is different because it’s a social layer on all of Google’s products. Google wants it to be your online identity, used when leaving Play store reviews, YouTube comments, or Spreadsheet edits. But until Plus earns users’ trust, many will continue to anticipate a shutdown and be cautious about embracing it, which may explain why Orkut has outlived Reader and many other defunct products.

As for self-driving cars and magic glasses, they emerged as part of Google’s forward-looking X Lab. Google’s new focus doesn’t rule it out from its tradition of experimenting with new products; it just makes sure that products either evolve or die. Moving sideways is not an option. So while its tempting to lump Google’s more exotic services together, it really makes more sense to think of Google’s portfolio as having three buckets: legacy, experimental, and core.

Myth: This is really about content lock-in

Reality: This is about scale.

To many mourning the loss of Reader, RSS symbolises freedom. Anyone with a web server can set up as a publisher and syndicate to readers who care enough to subscribe to the feed. If Google moves to a world of curated news like Currents, there’s a risk that freedom is lost, cutting off the long tail and making it hard for readers to get the news that matters to them. This is a realistic concern and one Google will have to address.

However, it shouldn’t be confused with a conspiracy against all things RSS. Google provided a pretty good product for eight years, but it only enjoyed a luke-warm reception at a time when Facebook and Twitter were growing exponentially. Flipboard, likewise, is on a path towards mainstream adoption, which Reader simply never achieved. So it doesn’t take a lock-in motive to explain the move toward a world of Plus and Currents – just a recognition that while Reader served millions of users admirably, Google is more interested in going after billions.

Myth: Google is destroying the RSS ecosystem

Reality: This is a net positive for the RSS ecosystem.

Google’s move is a double-edged sword for RSS. On the one hand, Reader was such a big part of the ecosystem that it held the standard together in many ways. As long as Reader could parse a feed, the publisher could find an audience. (And even get a reasonable measure of the audience just by tracking audience numbers on Reader.)

However, Reader also choked the field of innovation. It’s hard for niche products to find an audience when the elephant in the room is busy providing a free service. And this was not a service that was actively improving. As Reader’s former manager has famously pointed out, management has been trying to pull engineers away from the project since 2008 and decided to kill it in 2010. Better for third-parties who care about RSS to pick up the reigns.

And pick up the reigns they have. Some 500,000 people migrated to Feedly in the 48 hours after Google’s announcement. Digg’s upcoming implementation are in direct response to this announcement. Sites like ReplaceReader have been busy documenting dozens of Reader alternatives that are gaining traction right now. So we are starting to see companies innovating in a space that might otherwise have dwindled.

“RSS is dead” memes are about as old as RSS itself. The standard remains tenuous. But with Reader out of the way, and under the guardianship of companies that care deeply about its values, the RSS model has the best chance in years to flourish and gain new users.

Michael Mahemoff previously worked at Google and is founder of cloud podcasting service player.fm. Follow him on Twitter @mahemoff.

Have an idea for a post you’d like to contribute to GigaOm? Click here for our guidelines and contact info.

Photo courtesy  Ellerslie/Shutterstock.com.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The 2013 task management tools market
• Social media in Q1: commerce and discovery dominated
• Google doesn’t like walled gardens — except its own

Chief technology officer Eric Feng said in an interview prior to the launch of the new version that this is much more than just an evolution of Flipboard — it’s a major push into a whole new area, namely curation and publishing of content by individual users. “It’s one of the most ambitious efforts we have ever undertaken,” said the former CTO of Hulu. “It’s been more than 18 months since the inception of the idea, so this is a pretty big deal for us. We were originally focused on discovery and filtering of content, but now we are moving into curation in a big way.”

Flipboard has always had curated topics such as technology and sports, where the service uses a combination of human editors and algorithms — based on frequency of sharing and other metrics — to highlight specific content. In effect, the new tools allow any Flipboard user to take on the same role as an editor and create their own magazine around a topic, and share it with other users.

Reader magazines get promoted in Flipboard

In a nutshell, users with the new features (which are available only for iPhone and iPad currently, but will appear in an Android version soon, according to the company) can simply click a “plus” sign next to a blog post or article they are reading — as well as any video or audio content that appears in their stream — and add that piece of content or “flip it into” to a magazine, which will then be available to them or any other user who searches for that topic.

And Flipboard isn’t just giving users that ability within the app: the service is also launching a bookmarklet that will allow users to pull in content from anywhere on the web — whether it’s a blog post, a news website or Twitter and Facebook — and add it to their custom-created magazine. In a sense, Flipboard is trying to capitalize on the same curatorial impulse that makes people create collections about specific topics on Pinterest or re-blog photos on Tumblr, and in many ways this move is a shot across the bow of those other services.

It’s also clearly a threat to the existing publishing industry, since a Flipboard user can now create their own custom publication using the content that comes from dozens of different magazines, blogs, websites and other sources. So Flipboard is trying to bring publishers in as well and get them to create their own custom magazines — such as a magazine about the Beatles created with archival content from Rolling Stone. It has even built e-commerce functionality into the app so users can click and buy directly from within an article or ad.

But the most subversive aspect of the new features from a media-industry point of view is that they can be used by anyone — including advertisers. If an advertiser can create their own magazine by pulling in their own editorial content as well as content from other sources, and build e-commerce functionality into it, then it gives new meaning to the idea of brands as publishers and media entities.

Bringing users into the editorial process

The new version of the app will have a section called “By Our Readers” in the table of contents, which will include a mix of magazines that have been created by users on a variety of topics — a small group of beta testers (including GigaOM) have had access to this function for several months. As with the other Flipboard sections, some of the magazines that are highlighted will be chosen based on the number of times they have been shared, and others will be chosen by editors.

Like most news-aggregation and recommendation apps such as Pulse and Zite (which is owned by CNN), Flipboard users have always had the ability to share specific stories or items, but the new magazine-creation features effectively allow a user to spend some time creating a collection of content they can then share all at once. Feng used the example of an editor who is getting married soon and created an entire magazine with content about weddings.

In a way, the new version of the app also picks up where Google Reader and other RSS services left off. Instead of just passively consuming text and photos in a chronological timeline or series of folders, Flipboard turns everything into part of a magazine-style experience. According to Feng, many users have already imported their Google Reader feeds into the app, and those feeds will be available once Google sunsets the service in July.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Social media in Q1: commerce and discovery dominated
• Flash analysis: future opportunities for Pinterest
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution

HashTag It: When talking about Twitter, the at-name and hashtag are its calling card. And last week, hashtag hit the big time when it was copied by Facebook. And yeah, Yahoo’s Flickr started using hashtags as well. Capitalizing on the organizational capabilities, Flickr has already updated its mobile platform to include the hashtag, while Facebook has plans to use them to group conversations in an upcoming facelift. The reason why people are falling in love with hashtag: it makes clustering of data easier, which in turn makes it easy to — guess what — inject appropriate (contextual) ads. HashTag is the new like, or whatever.

Kickstarting a Revolution? Lucky sevens again! A seven-year absence can’t keep “Veronica Mars” fans down — they helped to fund the biggest film project in Kickstarter history this week as The “Veronica Mars” movie raised its goal of $2 million in two hours. Some might say that the project will allow other beloved, canceled-before-their-time TV shows to continue their sagas on the silver screen, but some filmmakers are wary of the precedent this “little” project’s success is setting — asking fans to pay to get a movie made, then forcing them to pay again at the box office. It’s true that the movie’s production costs will be covered by the contributions, but after the wild popularity of the project, Warner Bros. has decided to green-light marketing and distribution costs. Obviously, this leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of artists, as “The Man” stands to profit from the films’ success, instead of the ones who opened their wallets to get the thing made in the first place.

Keeping It Real: Let’s just say we are smarting from the death of Google Reader and that is why we (and we are not alone) are wary of Google’s newest offering, Google Keep. Keep is a note-taking, Evernote-competing, web-clipping app that drops saved items into your Google Drive for storage, and syncs across all your devices for easy access. Sounds great, but we are staying away.

iWatch or iNot: We have been privately musing that Apple’s iWatch might just be a head fake, a way to throw off the rivals (and even insiders at the company) and send them on a wild goose chase. Our theory is that we might see something else that is along the lines of a watch, is wearable on a wrist and is focused on health. Why? Because we think that is a bigger market, regardless of what techno-watch wearing friends of ours say.

Apparently we are not alone in our conspiracy-theory like thinking. Jean-Louis Gassee (formerly of Apple) also mused about this on Twitter. He was of course reacting to this article about Google’s watch plans, just like Samsung’s watch plans. Not to be mean or anything, one has to wonder why Samsung (and Google) have not invented (or reinvented) a new category since you know, the iPad launch. Maybe waiting for Apple to announce something?

What can Google Glasses do? Open the garage door and handle the fridge, along with giving you a lot of details about people around you. We admit, we are GG nerds and will be looking forward to its release, for we know that our focus on keeping Google (or for that matter anyone else) on its toes doesn’t win us many friends.

Sean Gourley, Co-Founder and CTO, Quid Structure Data 2013 Albert Chau / itsmebert.com

Less data science, more data art: In 2009, when we started talking about using data to think smartly about the world around us, I (Om) pointed out that “data is the new plastic.” We can create nasty landfill or amazing furniture from plastic, and data is the same way. It has been a while, but finally people are glomming on to that idea. And it was the common theme at our fourth Structure Data conference in New York. Here are some standout ideas, tweets and comments: a tl:dr version of sorts for those short on time. We have all the videos and all sessions transcribed and packaged for you, and you can catch up with all of our Structure Data 2013 coverage here on GigaOM.

One session you can’t miss: a keynote by Sean Gourley of Quid, who stepped up to say: less science and more intelligence from data. I say, bring it on.

Plus here is what CIA knows about you, even when you think they don’t.

And now for the stories you might have missed:

• When is the Internet accelerator bubble going to pop, asks BusinessWeek. Good question, but we feel it might actually be happening, we just don’t see it as clearly.
• Whether you prefer digital or analog, The Atlantic offers eight tips on becoming a master notetaker.
• Why the DMCA is bad for those with disabilities. Never really thought about it this way.
• How text messages could help identify a stroke
• An excerpt from Douglas Rushkoff’s new book, Present Shock, that is about the “now.”

Read this and other in-depth articles on GigaOM’s Flipboard channel

To be a part of the show, just call in and leave a voicemail at 262-KCTOFEL. If you do, we’ll play back the question on the show and answer it. Or you can tweet me at @kevinctofel on Twitter. Each week, I’ll answer as many questions as I can while keeping the podcast to a manageable amount of time: 20 to 30 minutes at most.

This episode of GigaOM Podcast is brought to you by Squarespace – the best way create a modern and professional website, with all the features you need integrated into one platform. Every Squarespace website is mobile ready, and includes e-commerce, 24/7 customer support, and a free domain name. Start your free trial today, at squarsepace.com/gigaom.

Show notes:
Hosts: Chris Albrecht and Kevin C. Tofel

• Is Samsung working on a smartwatch? Probably.
• What might a merger of Chrome OS and Android look like?
• Thoughts on Google Reader going away, along with some alternatives.
• How many Galaxy S 4 functions could make their way into the Galaxy Note 2?

(download this episode)

Subscribe to RSS

iTunes

Stitcher Radio

SELECT PREVIOUS EPISODES:

Podcast: Facebook’s feedin’; Lean In’s meanin’; and everyone’s Hadoop-in

IoT: When devices can talk, will they conspire against you?

Call-in show: Why the “I’m leaving iPhone” trend?

Internet of things Podcast – Almond+’s nutty idea: Making sensor connectivity a snap

Yahoo’s WFH Boo-Boo

PlayStation Snore?

Podcast: Why the internet of things is cool and how Mobiplug is helping make it happen

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Tablets wars: Apple is from Venus, Amazon is from Mars
• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro
• The connected planet: Smartphones aren’t the only player

The reality, though, is that Google operates at vast scale, and a niche consumer product like Reader just doesn’t move the needle. As crazy as it may sound, today even a billion-dollar business is simply a distraction to Google (unless, of course, it’s well on the way to becoming a five-billion-dollar business).

So all those who are signing petitions to Google  (and even one to The White House!) are missing the bigger point: that this is a victim of the company’s DNA, one that’s accelerated under Larry Page’s management. Some companies specialize in keeping the status quo, others specialize in moving forward. Google is the latter. If the company maintained every niche product with N thousand fans, even paying ones, it’d become the very bungling bureaucracy we love to hate. For a company with Google’s ethos and standing, any such dead-end, non-revenue-producing product that’s retained is holding others back, and prevents the company from moving forward and making true innovations instead of incremental improvements.

Open standards just a means to an end

While Google is giving up on Reader, I believe the company will still embrace subscriptions in a big way, just without RSS (by which I mean RSS, Atom, PubSubHubbub, etc.) Sure, they may continue to lean on RSS as part of their technical infrastructure – e.g. Googlebot will still be crawling external RSS feeds to identify fresh content – but users won’t see those three letters or the shiny feed icon that accompanies them.

To understand why Google’s walking away from RSS, look at Google’s relationship with open standards over the past decade. Google has experimented with various open technologies and found it difficult to win over Google-scale audiences and developers. The list of casualties would include OpenSocial (present in Orkut but not Plus), Activity Streams (present in Buzz, but not Plus, though certainly an inspiration), Social Graph API (no longer available) and RSS (not just Reader, but Feedburner is fading out and podcast app Listen was killed months ago).

Furthermore, Android has been a stonking success for the company, and while it may be open source, with a relatively open store policy, it’s not particularly based on open standards in the way that ChromeOS, WebOS, and now Firefox OS are.

So overall, Google’s lesson has been to lead with a compelling user experience first and then build an API from there, an API which may be based on open standards, but only if it’s a means to an end. Developers are much more attracted to a big market than a glorious proclamation of Open. It’s this philosophy that explains why Google has been so cautious with the Google Plus API.

Doubling down on media

Google isn’t giving up on blogs and media. Far from it. They already have Google News, Google Currents, and Google Now. And on Plus, they have vibrant product pages and communities. The Economist, Time, and ESPN all have over 2 million followers, for example.

This comes at a time when Facebook has been facing a backlash from journalists, with people saying that unless you’re paying for sponsored posts, it doesn’t show up in streams. Facebook’s recent design aims to fix this with a separate Subscriptions area, but as discussed on this week’s TWIT, it’s looking more like they experimented with subscriptions, that it wasn’t core to their business of connecting individuals, and now it’s off to the side.

So Google has an opportunity to win over media brands right now, and I believe they’ll be placing an emphasis on this in their own apps like Currents, as well as on Google Plus proper. In many respects, Currents is exactly what you’d expect from Google in 2013. It’s pretty, mobile-native, and “just works” without anyone having to learn the details of RSS.

Looking further ahead, Google has a vision heavily influenced by machine learning. The company has long known that the best search is the one you didn’t have to make, and this always-on attitude is now coming to fruition with Google Now. Google Now anticipates what users might be interested in at any time, and that includes the kind of articles people might presently be discovering on Google Plus.

Reader’s demise is understandably a sad moment for many, but I believe in time, it will be a positive for the overall ecosystem. Google simply wasn’t innovating on Reader, and as people shift over to services like Feedly or Newsblur (and new ones are popping up as I write), those companies will have extra incentive to innovate and extra resources to do so. Meanwhile, Google will continue to work on what it does best: boiling oceans and shooting for the moon.

Michael Mahemoff previously worked at Google and is founder of cloud podcasting service player.fm. Follow him on Twitter @mahemoff.

Have an idea for a post you’d like to contribute to GigaOm? Click here for our guidelines and contact info.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The 2013 task management tools market
• How consumer media will change in 2013
• Social 2013: The enterprise strikes back