It's not even a choice between free and not-free, sometimes you would be happy to pay but then the tool becomes bloatware. As the OP said, why do you need two vertical menus for an RSS reader? Why not hide the advanced stuff under an advanced menu or allow customising what is and isn't visible?
Plenty of apps/sites become popular on a strong core USP which people want and then add a tonne of cruft as they pretend they are adding value, when in many cases it is just noise that only a few people want/use but everyone else has to suffer the UX changes along the way.
Plenty of apps/sites become popular on a strong core USP which people want and then add a tonne of cruft as they pretend they are adding value, when in many cases it is just noise that only a few people want/use but everyone else has to suffer the UX changes along the way.