After Google Reader, it is the turn of Yahoo Pipes!
You probably remember… It was July 2013, after 8 years of loyal service, Google Reader disappeared. A real bolt for the small world of CI professionals. If was followed by a wave for free replacement solutions and a real hunt for finding the most suitable overall.
Well, now it’s the turn of Yahoo Pipes to forfeit. By announcing its imminent death. In fact, if you use Yahoo Pipes, be aware that it will not be possible to create Pipes after August 30. The service will shut down for good after 30 September.
Remember, Yahoo! Pipes was a web application created by Yahoo! providing users a way to combine a set of RSS feeds (among other sources) just to create a custom, combined feed. It allowed to manipulate RSS feeds via filters, or playing with a combination of rules to extract only useful information in a single rss feed.
Enough to make a serious chill to all those who advocate the use of free tools!
What’s wrong with the free tools model?
Over the years, free applications for CI have become ubiquitous on the Web. They invaded forums, CI tools mapping and lists and each had their own tutorials generated by fans.
True, there is still a real business for trainers in CI that explains how to use them and combine them to get a truly professional CI suite. Some courses offers up to 5 separate CI applications just for performing the loop – that is, from surveillance to diffusion.
Indeed, often mono task and most of the time very intuitive, these tools have the merit to exist and to be (partly) free, yet they represent a significant investment in time and more or less high learning curve for appropriation. In addition, when one of these disappear (a brick or link in your CI process) disappears, it’s your entire CI methodology and “production line” that is shattered.
And if it was time to change your habits?
To go further, we invite you to read an article in December 2013 where we give some tips for choosing the right monitoring tool:
https://www.viedoc.fr/en/5-advices-to-choose-your-ci-tool/
