Feedly: How To Develop A New Product The Collaborative Way

You probably have heard of Feedly, this fantastic Content aggregator which makes RSS feeds reading as appealing as on a real paper magazine - that is, on top, your own self-made magazine.

An early-adopter, I'm using Feedly since Day One. I'd better say "was using", since Feedly is a Firefox-only extension: as many of us Mac users, I switched back to Safari with the 4.0 beta version of the Apple' navigator. So, bye-bye Feedly and its amazing user-experience. Welcome back, Google Reader. 

Reader is powerful indeed, however it doesn't provide this special touch that makes Feedly so sexy to use all day long. It's like comparing a PC running Windows Seven with a Mac running Leopard, see what I mean ?

That's why lots of us were yelling at Edwin Khodabakchian, the smart guy behind Feedly: "Give us a Safari version, quick !". Ed listened to us. Feedly for iPhone is coming - most probably as a beta version together with the upcoming iPhone 3.0 software release. How does Edwin and his team work on this new product ? Simple: they leverage on existing tools to talk to the User.

Which tools ? Well, since Feedly is a typical Web 2.0 application, those are Web 2.0 tools. The blog obviously, Twitter, Google Docs - see the product roadmap here, just amazing - the outstanding Customer Support service GetSatisfaction, and FriendFeed, where everything is discussed.

You may want to have a look at the numerous posts and comments on FriendFeed: it's a marvelous example of the power of Web 2.0 to get and keep in touch with the end-users. Customers feedback, Power-Users suggestions, ideas sharing: everything a Product Marketing fellow dreams of is there, at your fingertips. The benefits for the company ? Countless. For instance, the speed of the development is dramatically increased, as people can instantly react to a new idea. The features set at the first release is the one people are expecting, because they've participated to the new product generation process. And, on top, the adoption rate can be quite fast, provided a) all the people who participate are de-facto beta-testers, and b) the product is theirs.

Web 2.0 hype is dead, because we already live in the Web 2.0 Age.

To contribute to Feedly For iPhone aka "Project Nitro", go here: http://friendfeed.com/feedly-iphone

Comments

[business directory]

Reader is powerful indeed, however it doesn't provide this special touch that makes Feedly so sexy to use all day long. It's like comparing a PC running Windows Seven with a Mac running Leopard...

[Marc Duchesne]

@Jay : since Feedly now runs pretty well on Safari, I use Reader only for adding/modifying/deleting a RSS feed.
It's amazing to see how the Feedly folks have been able to mix the tradition of the Newspaper with the modernity of the Web.

[corporate gifts]

I switched back to Safari with the 4.0 beta version of the Apple' navigator. So, bye-bye Feedly and its amazing user-experience.

[marc duchesne]

You can enjoy Feedly on Safari. See Feedly's blog.

[corporate gifts]

For instance, the speed of the development is dramatically increased, as people can instantly react to a new idea.