Where we are currently:

• We have a nice feed reader for Gnome.
• It's a bit buggy.
• Not everyone uses a desktop feed reader: there are Planets, feed readers on the web, feed readers for IMAP...

Why a feed reader?

Provides the possibility to implement deskbar search, new item notification, integration with desktop, integration with web readers, migration plugins from other feed readers. TODO has more ideas.

Some of these could be done in a good email app or as a plugin to one too.