The Old Reader Might 'Live After All' As Cancellation Announcement Updated

The Old Reader, a popular social RSS reader with over 400,000 users, announced earlier today that they had closed registrations and would be shutting the site down to the public in two weeks. The Old Reader has since updated its blog post, stating that the development team had "received a number of proposals" to keep the service going.

"Chances are high that public The Old Reader will live after all," the update said. What began as an alternative to Google Reader with as many as 60,000 users signing up in a single day, became one of the default alternatives when Google discontinued their service last month.

Killed by its own popularity?

Google announced that they would be canceling their Reader in March, which led to an increase in the popularity of The Old Reader. Due to the heavy load of users and the maintenance required to keep The Old Reader functioning, the team behind the app said that life became like "hell," with "no work like balance at all."

In the original blog post announcing the cancellation, The Old Reader development team said that they would make the service private for users who registered before March 13, the day Google made the announcement that they would cancel Google Reader. New users who signed up since then would be given two weeks to export their data from The Old Reader before the transition became complete.

"We feel great responsibility for the project," the blog post says. "We’d rather provide a smooth and awesome experience for [10,000] users than a crappy one for [420,000]."

The Old Reader development team did not immediately respond to a request for comment seeking clarification on the offers, but it sounds like potentially good news for users of the service.

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