Bloglines dies on Oct. 1, 2010.
OK, I’ll admit that I mostly stuck with Bloglines as my RSS reader out of habit. I had all my feeds backed up on Google Reader though. Bloglines has gotten a little wonky lately and was a little slow to update, but it worked for me. There wasn’t enough real pain to make a switch. I find Google Reader a little clunky but I guess I’ll get used to it.
I will admit it too.
My name is Stephen and I am an RSS addict.
The End of Bloglines is Nigh – Will Close October 1
Just a few weeks notice seems tight but I’ve migrated easily today.
I do have some concerns.
1. Will Google Reader have a monopoly on RSS feed readers now? There are some smaller options but not too many. Do I want the world’s largest ad agency to have access to all my feed behaviour? That seems to be the current price of free.
2. IAC has a long history of waffling on strategy – we’re in search, we’re not in search; Portals, no not portals, etc. Will they be back?
3. Twitter just doesn’t cut it for me in this context. I don’t like to comingle everything in the archive and it’s more of a social distribution system for me connected to Facebook and my blog.
4. IAC stated that they think RSS is in decline. I respectfully disagree. It’s still a very usuful tool and much more targeted, private and personal than tagging or tweeting.
Oh well, I am defeated and change persists.
Stephen
9 Responses
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It’s pretty much Google or nothing. Although the one small spark of hope is Netvibes, which has excellent support for RSS and is pretty reasonable, unless you have a lot of feeds. I’ve played around with a few of the options and I’m less than impressed with any of them.
Agree re Twitter. What IAC is yapping on about Twitter and Facebook for I have no idea, since the services are entirely different. They are clueless to a dangerous level and shouldn’t be left in charge of anything more dangerous than a balloon in my opinion. Bloglines was a pretty good service until they took it over and wrecked it. Very disappointing.
I too an worried. I never liked Google Reader (and blogged that some time ago).
What I dislike about Google products is that if you log out of one application, they log you automatically, without asking, out of *all* Google applications. Log out of Blogger, and you get logged out of Gmail, and of course now to log *in* to Blogger, you can *only* use your Gmail account!
Fear not. Google Reader is not that bad. I’ve been using it since the beginning and find it easy to use. I prefer the old interface (all items listed, not in categories), but I like that there is a choice. At one time I followed over 100 blogs, now down to about 25. Steve, are you still following over 700 or so like you were?
I was 1,000 feeds today so I cleaned things up and deleted about 65 feeds – mostly dead or duplicated feeds though. I am a hoarder. My main concern is that I just want to read unread posts in a single stream. I’ll need to review the filters.
Stephen
Found this at iLibrarian and it was helpful:
5 Tips for Getting the Most out of Google Reader
http://gigaom.com/collaboration/5-tips-for-getting-the-most-out-of-google-reader/
Indeed just hitting the ? key helped a lot in Google Reader,
Thanks.
Stephen
I agree with all that you have written. I am in the same situation with bloglines and google reader. I have always found bloglines so easy to use and organise, whereas google reader just seemed clunky and cluttered. I exported my feeds over yesterday (260+) and looking at Greader again it doesn’t look so bad as I remember, it will just take some adjusting. Thanks for the link above, will check it out
I’ve only used Google Reader, enjoy it but fear Google’s growth. They collect too much data and it’s getting easier and easier for them. Perhaps I’m being paranoid given that privacy no longer exists anyway.
I found out about the shutdown when I was doing some research on feed readers for a workshop. I had a Bloglines account, and I was pretty loyal to it for a while. I did back up everything to Google at one point to try it out, and after a while, just made the switch to Google. Bloglines was just getting too wonky, often it was down, or not working properly, and I got tired of it. I personally do not like the idea that the G will be getting a monopoly, but sadly, the few minor players left are nothing to write home about (and it seems they are biting the dust. Rojo went kaput a while back too).
Best, and keep on blogging.
P.S. if anyone does find a new feed reader that is decent, let me know. I would love to have an alternative.
Late to the comment board but just wanted to concur on the demise of bloglines and the switch to Google Reader. In Google Reader, when I’ve read something I don’t want to keep, I want it to disappear.
Even though I use twitter and facebook for particular things, it could never replace the service an RSS feed reader provides!