Replacement for Google Reader (will be shut down)

In My Humble Opinion
41

Consolidating information is just organization, in this context. I don’t place all my feeds together-- I simply attach labels, and group like-feeds together under the same category. For example, I have labels which deal with mobile tech, general tech, music, auto, world news, general news, health, etc. When I’m in the mood for reading a particular category, I browse to that label and see what’s new from a variety of sources.

It beats having to go to each individual source, to see what, if anything, is new. Especially with mobile, it makes a lot of sense.

Twitter is fundamentally different, but with RSS feeds, you don’t have to click every one. In fact, it’s infinitely faster to just read brief descriptions of the content, and have it marked as read, as I scroll past. If I want to view anything of specific interest, I can click and go to the source, but this enables me to preview hundreds of articles, if I wanted, within a few minutes. From there, I can save, forward, share, etc. Accuracy of information is always important, to me, but I suppose it varies with what content you’re involved with.

RSS feeds don’t need to be for everyone, but they indeed possess very good functionality. Social media is in no way, shape, or form, a viable substitute, IMO. WIth twitter, you’re talking about a service. With RSS feeds, you’re talking about a standard-- equivalent to a web browser.

42

Note: Two threads on the topic merged.

43

Same same. Out of all the products I use on my Google account, Reader is the only one I use every day. I can’t imagine how much more time it would take to click through 30 bookmarks in the hopes that you caught each of those blogs after they’ve updated for the day. I read a few that get short updates several times a day – which take a minute to read if all I have to do is skim Reader for the highlighted feeds, but would take a lot more time if I had to navigate to those blogs multiple times a day.

RSS is the most useful, time-saving, convenient thing in the internet world. I check it over breakfast and every time I have a break. I don’t get this “no one uses it” thing. Why the F not?

44

The vast majority of my feeds import the entire article into Reader. I can’t remember the last time I had to click away from Reader to do my daily reading.

Agreed. As shocking as it may be to some, there ARE times when I don’t want to rely on someone else’s opinion of what I should read. I want to read what I want to read.

45

I tried using Google Reader for tracking some message board threads, but there were enough technical glitches (involving the RSS not updating, presumably not a glitch on Google’s side) that I gave up on it.

46

Absolutely, I was unclear. I have the usual preview with headlines, I can then read the information (from within the reader), and if necessary, go to the source. We’re on the same page, thanks for the catch. :slight_smile:

47

Ironically enough, I had just recently gone from using a desktop reader (FeedDemon) to the GReader interface simply because I preferred to keep the activity within the browser. The problem with replacing Google Reader is not just the web interface – hell, FeedDemon as a desktop product isn’t going away, even after Google Reader dies, but you won’t be able to use it to keep your feed reading synced across desktop and mobile platforms. And for many the mobile sync and the iOS or Android app availability are a big part of the problem; so many of these apps use Google Reader on the back end.

I’ve switched to the previously-mentioned Feedly; it seems to be well-prepared for the eventual Google shutdown (right now they are syncing with the Google Reader back end, but have planned for their own server to take over sync when Google shuts down). The web interface is a bit more frilly than Google Reader, but it’s customizable, and their iOS apps are beautiful.

A couple of other options I’ve seen mentioned elsewhere:[ul][li]Old Reader – patterns itself after Google Reader before Google stripped the sharing functionality.[*]NewsBlur – More graphical and supposedly more customizable.[/ul]I don’t believe either of these has native mobile apps, but the sites supposedly work well on mobile browsers. Both of them have been slammed by the unanticipated influx of new users, so are spottily available at best right now.[/li]
Which is another reason I like Feedly. They’re up and running, and they seem to have been anticipating Google’s move. Looks like they’ll come out the winner in this, unless the Digg project surpasses them, or somebody else steps in to the wide-open market - like these guys suggest might happen.

Incidentally, that second link above is entitled “Why I love RSS and You Do Too” and is worth a read for anyone wondering what all the fuss is about.

48

As an American ex-pat living in China, I can depend on Google Reader to give me news from any computer (including blocked sites like NY Times). While I have a VPN at home, it doesn’t work in the classroom or office or anywhere else. Depending on social media is a terrible move from my perspective because most Western sites like Google+ and Twitter are blocked. Here’s an article talking about Google Reader from an Iranian perspective and their dismay at the move.

49

Oops, wrong thread.

50

I suspect that Google is dumping Reader because it directly conflicts with Google ad revenues, which is what pays the bills at Google. Think of it this way, with RSS you get a text list of headlines/article titles, no fluff, no ads. You don’t have to visit and revisit a dozen sites a day, you just skim a list of headlines. And many times the headline is 99% of the article, like “Stock market down 3% today.” With a headline like that there is no reason to click the link unless you want the questionable analysis on why it’s down.

You only see ads if anything interests you enough to click the headline. But maybe you only click on 2 or 3 articles a day, or none, rather than visiting several sites browsing for articles manually or searching Google for content.

51

Well I finally found something that has a pretty similar layout to Google Reader. It’s called Netvibes. It’s a bit weird to figure out, but you can import your feeds from Reader and once you get it setup right, it will display the updates as Reader does. As in, you don’t have to click a link to see the update. It’s just all right there to scroll through.

52

It’s interesting that in this thread, as well as several blog posts I’ve read about Google Reader replacements, not one person has mentioned Bloglines. Why is that? I know that for a while it looked like it would be shut down, but it got acquired by someone else and still seems to be alive and well, at http://www.bloglines.com/ . Is anyone using it? Or did it get forgotten about when Google Reader became popular?

53

Not sure what the relationship (if any) is between Netvibes and Bloglines, but they look identical; maybe that’s why Bloglines hasn’t been mentioned.

I’ve given NewsBlur another look, and aside from some minor problems dealing with the massive influx of new users (I believe they’ve had to suspend free accounts), the interface seems to be damn close to the best aspects of Google Reader, with some added functionality as well. I’m suspicious the ease with which Feedly is currently operating owes more to their still using Google’s back end than their own technical acumen.

54

Lifehacker has a few articles about Google Reader replacements

I’m surprised about all the people who think RSS is dead. I see the little icon on almost every site that is of the “update on a regular basis” style of site. Which is almost everything out there nowadays. You can use Twitter and Facebook, but then you’re relegated to only the sites that also update via those sites.

I use several methods for reading feeds
Livejournal is what I use most - its biggest problem is that it is flaky - rss feeds are generally the first to go if they’re having problems. But it’s good for high volume feeds, and for feeds where I don’t want to read stories that are more than 4-5 days old.
Google reader for the blogs I want to keep the stories around till I feel like reading them - mostly craft blogs.
Yahoo pages for a few specialized feeds - I’ve had this one forever.

55

Yeah, after having tried out several of the various replacements for a few days, I’ve settled on NewsBlur. Feedly looks nice and runs smoothly but I don’t need a slick magazine-style interface, and as you say, I’m concerned that it’s running smoothly because it’s basically just a front-end for Reader.

NewsBlur is still in the process of scaling up for all the new users, so it’s experiencing sporadic downtime and other occasional glitches (it took them a couple of days to get my premium account activated, for example) but overall I’m really pleased with it as a Reader replacement.

PS: Someone up-thread suggested that NewsBlur doesn’t have mobile apps, which is incorrect. There’s a NewsBlur app for both iOS and Android. I only have experience with the iOS one, but it seems to work pretty smoothly.

56

The view modes, such as magazine, can be changed in preferences. Otherwise they do seem to have a plan for when the lights go out, as well as responding pretty rapidly to circumstances (judging from their blog, and the continued smoothness of the service, despite the influx).

57

Well, I’m attempting to try The Old Reader, as it seemed the most like how I use RSS, but the queue to import my feeds stands at 28K. It’s only gone down 3K (from 31,900-and-something) in the last 3 or 5 days. Soooo… it’ll be at least a month before I can play around with it, and I haven’t even imported all of my feeds yet (I have two sets that I’m consolidating).

I tried NewsBlur and it’s really clunky and not all that intuitive to use. (WTF are those buttons on the bottom? I see no obvious difference between Original and Story, or between Feed and Text. And other than clicking in the bottom pane, there doesn’t seem to be any way to navigate to the next unread post. I just want to use my scroll wheel, thanks, not move my mouse all over the page.) The only thing I DO like is rendering the post within the actual blog page template.

I’m not sold on Feedly, yet. Anything else out there?

58

I wasn’t in any hurry to switch as I wanted to see how everything shaked out first but yesterday, Google Reader was really acting up for me for whatever reason. I went ahead and imported my subscriptions into The Old Reader (no queue!) and am enjoying it so far. They even recently installed the Google shortcuts (j/k keys to move forwards/backwards) so I’m pretty happy right now.

59

I’ve been trying out the Old Reader, too, and it’s great-- liking it a lot more than Feedly or, it seems, never versions of Reader.

60

Interview with two of the three co-founders of The Old Reader: http://kopoint.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/the_old_reader_interview_kopoint.mp3 (22 minutes)

They clearly weren’t ready for the Google Reader shutdown which swamped them with new subscribers but they’re scaling up nicely. Long live RSS!