Brad W. Allen

Feed Wrangler is my sync service and Reeder (iTunes link) is my app of choice for the daily consumption of my RSS feeds. Here’s how that came to be…

I used Google Reader as my RSS sync service for years. At first I was just reading all my RSS feeds on the Google Reader website but after the phenomenal Reeder app came out I rarely looked at the Google Reader site again and instead its sole purpose was to act as my sync “backend”.

Like everybody else, when Google announced they were shutting down Reader I started watching various developers and companies rush to fill the impending void.

I’m happy to say they came through. There are now tons of great options for everybody.

David Smith was one of the developers I was watching after he “pre-announced” his secret project Feed Wrangler. Once he finished building it though I was on the fence. Even though he also made an accompanying iPhone app (iTunes link), it wasn’t Reeder (sorry David!), and making the leap from free to $19 for reading my RSS feeds wasn’t too appealing.

Two things convinced me to go with Feed Wrangler though:

1. David built in solid service with a 3rd party API
2. Paying for a service makes you the customer whereas with a free service (especially one from Google) the customer is actually the paying advertisers, not you

The first one allowed Reeder to add support for Feed Wrangler and that makes me happy. The second one will not only allow David to operate a sustainable business and feed his family, it will allow me to be his customer instead of an advertiser. As someone who has a desire to one day change his career to independent development, it’s money well spent that makes me feel good. That’s what it’s all about.