Last week it appeared the end was nigh for the public version of popular RSS service The Old Reader. A blog post over the weekend, however, indicates that someone has stepped in to save the day, meaning thousands of users have been saved the hassle of once again having to hunt around for another place to park their feeds.
“We’re pleased to announce that The Old Reader will officially remain open to the public”, Ben Wolf, who presumably is part of the takeover team, wrote in the post.
According to Wolf, The Old Reader now has a larger team and “significantly” more resources to deal with the influx of users that followed the shuttering of Google Reader at the start of last month.
Long-time site developers Elena Bulygina and Dmitry Krasnoukhov are set to stay with The Old Reader, Wolf said.
It was Bulygina and Krasnoukhov who last week said they had become overwhelmed by the work required to keep the site up and running – calling it “hell in every possible aspect we could imagine” – and as a result had taken the decision to slash its user base by closing the site to those who joined in the wake of the demise of Google Reader, and instead run it for friends and others close to the site.
Future
As for the future, Wolf said that far from simply managing the current set-up, the team will be working on improving the site with a number of new features. He also said plans are afoot to grow The Old Reader’s user base and as a consequence the site will be transitioning to “a top tier hosting facility in the US” in the coming days.
“It’s going to require some downtime and for that we sincerely apologize, but it’s also going to mean a lot more servers, 10x faster networks, and long-term stability,” Wolf wrote. “We realize that doesn’t make the downtime easy but rest assured that things are looking up.”
Wolf declined to reveal details about the group or company that has apparently saved The Old Reader, but promised to introduce the new team in the coming weeks.
[Image: Palto / Shutterstock]
