@bouncepaw the ui to add a feed was simple: paste a url

the interface itself was like a construct your own newspaper, which at the time was customizing your own personal homepage. and since this was before ad proliferation, people shared the full content of their blogs, so user styles counted.

all this to say, google reader was mostly good because it was a product of the times and even if all the technical pieces magically fell back in place today, socially, web publishing is different.