[marbletiles]

People love stripped-down versions: Instapaper, Pocket, Flipboard et al are all testament to that (as is AdBlock, to an extent)

I think it was almost entirely because the "follow/unfollow" experience was so clunky, especially compared to Twitter and FB. Even today, adding and removing feeds from my readers is unnecessary pain.

The hurdle is far too high for the casual audience.