Those services are regressing because the general population of users is no longer dominatated by people who like to read. As mainstream consumers flooded onto the internet over the past decade, the demographic changed. Services that give you a lot of stuff to read, no matter how nicely delivered, are not the the services the mainsteam consumers want.
Yep. This means you probably can't get Facebook-level users into your service. But the old group of readers is still out there, looking for a good product. And if it was big enough audience to launch products in 2006, why wouldn't it be now?
