If you're searching for an RSS reader for the enterprise, Feedly isn't for you (or, Silicon Valley is not like normal people)

It's a common problem that we have. We assume that since the people that we know act a certain way, every one of the 7 billion people in the world act in the same way.

I have to constantly remind myself that there are 6,999,999,999 people in the world who do not profess a common interest in biometrics, Luther's Small Catechism, Marnie, and Shetland Sheepdogs. (This explains why I have fewer readers than tmz.com.)

Apparently some companies need that reminder.

I have previously vented about tech startups that ignore enterprise users. My latest example of such a company is Feedly.

When Google Reader announced its pending retirement, the one name that kept on cropping up as a potential replacement was Feedly. This is great, I thought, because then I can use Feedly to read all of the biometrics RSS feeds. Oh, and by the way, I work at a biometrics company that has standardized on a single web browser application.

If you know me, and if you know Feedly, you know what happened next.

Feedly is available on Chrome, Safari, Firefox.

So I'm reading my biometrics feeds on pulse.me (and dealing with the lack of customization on Pulse; just today, I tried adding a feed to the business category and was informed that I had already subscribed to the maximum number of feeds for that category).

"Wait a minute," I thought. "Maybe the wise people in Silicon Valley are right. Maybe I should quit my job and only work for companies that support browsers other than Internet Explorer. Maybe I'm the only one who has this problem."

Then I ran across this Feedly support thread. Here are some excerpts:

In the university, IE is the only browser available, and not the most up to date one either, unfortunately. It's obvious from the responses in here that some businesses restrict browsers, too. So if Feedly is just a sort of hobbyist app for home use, that's fine - but if it's going to be a serious replacement for Google Reader, it has to cater for business and academic users too....

Can't believe you can't just use feedly in a browser window... why should we need an extension for something such an rss reader? IE support is completely needed; like others here I'm restricted to IE at work....

Without support for IE, feedly is no real alternative for Google Reader. I mainly use Reader to keep up to date for my job but at work they use IE and I can't even install other browsers....

Now imagine what percentage of these people (like myself) are surprised and disappointed that there is no support for IE9/IE10 (one of the most popular browser versions in use)....

There is NO reason why you can't support Internet Explorer. In fact I see no reason why Feedly needs to be as extension at all....

I had installed firefox (and then chrome) at my previous work and I was called immediatelly to the IT dpt & received a warning. The next thing was a universal ban of firefox installments through out the company (and it was a big one :-) ... That's why we need Feedly for IE but noone cares obviously....

I notice that my Feedly home page is now showing a survey from Feedly about making it a paid service. I think there is one simple answer to that - only when you provide complete browser support, especially for a browser that a large part of the potential user population is locked into by policies outside of their control. If you commit to that, I would be willing to pay a reasonable yearly subscription fee for the service....

Incidentally, note that in addition to supporting Internet Explorer, enterprise users need Internet Explorer support that doesn't require a plugin. Without that, enterprise users have two solutions - read their feeds within Internet Explorer itself (thus losing portability), or finding another app.

But hey, if it's good enough for Palo Alto, then it's good enough for the rest of the world. Isn't it?