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1KPL.us is a News Reader Service of Last Resort

1kpl.usA few weeks ago I set a goal: to write a post for every new (or new to me) news reader service that I come across. Today I regretted that decision.

I’ve just spent an hour playing with 1kpl.us, a news reader service that (so far as I can tell) has no redeeming value.

It’s a freemium service that wants to charge you $5 a month (after a 3 week trial) for a bare minimum of features. That’s far more than I am paying for BazQux, and yet 1kpl.us is missing basic features like compact list view and the ability to share links on social networks.

Here’s what it looks like:

1kpl.us

The icons along the left side of the screen offer the usual options, inducing unread, starred, shared, and so on. The bottom most icon leads to a basic help page, while the plus sign above lets you subscribe to new feeds. 1kpl.us also lets you import an OPML file of feeds, but there’s no way to import directly from your Google Reader account.

There are absolutely zero formatting options beyond the ability to show either the full post or a slug.

I honestly cannot find anything nice to say about this service, but I am posting this as a public service. Stay away from it.

I would not go so far as to say that this is a scam, but I do wonder if this is a real service or perhaps simply someone’s tech demo. The unreasonably high price could be intended to discourage long term use while still keeping the semblance of a publicly available service.

1kpl.us

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