Monday 24 June 2013

You Tell Me | RIP, Reader

One week from today, as part of their second annual spring cleaning, Google will retire their ubiquitous Reader.

I've known about this for months, and I still don't have a clue what I'm going to do!

Here's why Google are "sunsetting" the service:
We know Reader has a devoted following who will be very sad to see it go. We’re sad too.  
There are two simple reasons for this: usage of Google Reader has declined, and as a company we’re pouring all of our energy into fewer products. We think that kind of focus will make for a better user experience.
Not for Google Reader users. Of which there must be more than a few; more than a few million, I'd imagine. Evidently that's a significantly smaller a number than it once was — and what does that say about blogs, I wonder? — but be that as it may, Google are set to stamp out something some of us, yours truly included, use every damn day.


First and foremost, Google Reader helps me keep track of all the blogs I follow, which I see now number in the hundreds. I also use it each week to organise the news stories I plan to talk about over the course of the British Genre Fiction Focus. I've never given Google a penny for the service, but I would have been well and truly willing to.

If they'd only asked! But Google don't do that, do they? And it's not like they need my pennies anyway.

Time, I think, to look on the bright side. To find a better alternative, because whether or not Google agrees, I need something to help me keep up to speed with all the shenanigans that happen when I'm otherwise occupied. And maybe this mystery service will be better than the nearly dearly departed product — which, let's face it, is at best pretty basic.

That's where you folks come in, fingers crossed, because I simply don't know where to start looking for a replacement feed reader. So please, you tell me!

16 comments:

  1. I've been using Feedly for a while now and it's fast, slick, works on my phone and computer and after categorising all the blogs, pretty user friendly! It also imports all your Google Reader feeds which makes the move pretty painless.

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  2. Bloglovin' is a decent alternative and it also allows you to import your Google Reader feeds.

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  3. I've tried a few over the past few months, and I've settled on Feedly also. It actually works a bit better than Reader for viewing on my kindle, as it will play video in the app on the device rather than having to open the browser.

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  4. I also switched to Feedly. They seem to have integrated well with Reader, and I have the iPhone and iPad apps. I actually prefer it on my iPad, but the desktop browser works well too.

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  5. I tried Feedly and really disliked it. I am now quite happy with Netvibes.

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  6. I've been quite pleased with Bloglovin so far, both as a tool for following blogs and for generating followers of my own blog. Nice integration with Facebook as well.

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  7. I've just started using The Old Reader (www.theoldreader.com). Nice, clean interface. Only downside so far is that it takes some time to update your feeds.

    I've considered Feedly, but I refuse to give third party sites my Google login info. As soon as they add the ability to create an account with just an email address and password, I'll definitely check it out.

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  8. Google Reader was awesome, and I'm really sorry to see it go. I did stop using it months ago, though, since I heard the announcement and figured I'd better give myself time to get used to a new reader in the meantime. I went to Bloglovin first, and it was okay, but it had an annoying habit of losing the feed for about 1 random blog each week and then loading them all later on. Today I switched over to Feedly and I'm finding it much more accessible. Hopefully it won't have the same problem that Bloglovin did.

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  9. Feedly is the best ATM. A number of good apps also work with feedly's sync service ATM so it is a 'safe' bet. That said, a lot of big names are releasing alternatives such as Digg, AOL, and Facebook. So, there should be plenty of options. Just save a copy of you exported subscriptions so you can test drive the new options as they come online.

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  10. I only use my computer for this stuff, so I have all my feeds tied into Thunderbird so that they all update when I check my email. I was using FeedDemon for a long while, but it went into a glitchy doom spiral over the course of a few updates and ended up just short of useless.

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  11. I am using Netvibes and it is quite good. It has an interface similar to Google reader and I am satisfied with it so far. I heard of Feedly when the news about Google Reader went live but I didn't get a chance to test it yet.

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  12. I've been using netvibes for the past few months, and I'm satisfied with it as well.

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  13. Feedly is the way to go. Nice interface and they're adding good features, too.

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  14. I've gone with The Old Reader (http://theoldreader.com) because I can format it to look and feel almost exactly like Google Reader. I don't like having to get used to new formats and Feedly annoyed me for that reason. (I sound like I'm 80. I'm not. I'm just cranky.)

    I also like the clarity of its privacy policy, and the Knowledge Base and user forums. And it has the advantage of having social reader/sharing features in the way google reader used to.

    It's compatible with Feeddler, which I use for my iPhone RSS feed reading. (I just deleted it from my iPhone, then restored it from the Purchased Apps and had it sync with Old Reader rather than Google.)

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  15. I've switched to Bloglovin - the transfer from GR went smoothly and I now am finding BL better than GR - so I have stopped feeling so negative on Google - they have done me a favour! Cheers

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