Digg has added a survey to talk about your current RSS usage and how you would like the new digg rss reader to be.
I of course filled it out immediately, and talked about my use of Reeder (which was one of the survey choices, nice) and wanting integration with more sharing services, like Pinboard, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Link-ed in, Buffer, Pocket, anything you can thing of should be built in.
All Things D has a good article on the closing of Google Reader. It contends not only did Reader not even have a product manager or full time engineer when it was closed, but now every team needs a team dealing with privacy issues, with lawyers and others, and since google wasn’t making money off of it, they didn’t want to put those people on. And it claims it was too integrated into google apps to sell it (though I don’t believe that).
Interesting point, but I still think they could keep their users happy and keep it going, especially after killing the rest of the market with it, but we are all finding alternatives now, and will be moving to them if we already have not.
I woke up this morning to an e-mail from Feedly on how to make Feedly more Google Reader like. So of course I decided to give it another chance.
And I have to say with the changes, it is a pretty good Reader replacement. Fast and works well. And for now it still syncs with Reeder (until they replace with their own backend when reader goes down). My only complaint so far is that the feed organization is pretty bad. I can’t seem to drag feeds where they were very easily.
That and the iOS app is set up as the graphical view and you can’t seem to change that. Until Google Reader goes away I will be using REEDER to sync with Google Reader, and trying Feedly on the desktop for now.
CNET has the news on this Google Chrome extension coming back, though no longer with Google Reader. You can get the extension from Google. No longer works with Reeder, need to figure out URL’s to work with the new readers that I am trying now.
If you read my blog you know I am completely distraught by apple getting rid of Google Reader, and have been busy trying out alternatives, but am still unhappy with any of them, and have just been using Google Reader while I can, and especially REEDER for the Mac, iPhone and iPad. Hopefully it will either get a way to sync via icloud or use a backend that will let it continue to work as it currently does.
Of the others Newsblur is pretty Reader like with some cool new features and does work well on the iPad.
I am not liking netvibes as well as you have to do too much with drop down menus.
And I still can’t say with TheOldReader as I am now 2023 in line to import my RSS feeds! Ha! At this rate Google Reader will be down by the time I get to try it out!
And I just don’t like Feedly. I want a list, not pictures and a magazine format. Too much like Flipboard for my taste. I want more control and more speed in my reeder.
I really hope DIggs new Reader is as good and fast as Reader.
Not that I think it will change Google’s mind, but it would be great if they released their source code so someone else could take up where they left off exactly, even with a pay wall, which I think enough of us would pay to make it worth while!
So I still want Google Reader back, and honestly mostly I have switched back to it along with Reeder on my iPad, but instead of staring items I am sending them to pinboard. And if I had to chose one of the other choices as of right now it would have to be newsblur, though I think it is slow and not nearly as efficient as Reader was.
And as for TheOldReader I can’t really say as I have only moved up to 4830 after what 5 days, so I figure my feeds will import in a couple of weeks and I can give it a go.
Netvibes interface is just not great for an iPad, which is where I mostly read feeds. Maybe with a dedicated app it would be better.
And Feedly I just don’t like the look of it, if they would also have a more reader like view maybe I could go for it. I do find it interesting that they say their user base grew by half a million in one day as of the announcement as that is a huge amount more than the 120,000 who have signed the petition to not kill Google Reader.
Lets hop that Diggs app is good.
Or if Reeder updates feeds itself, and syncs via iCloud as I do have Mac, iPad and iPhone versions. Will not be great for at work as I won’t have an app there, but I could always just use my ipad.
The Guardian UK has a great article on why killing Google Reader is like Killing the bees.
Basically RSS never caught on with the internet in general, and it isn’t an easy source of income, and google would of course rather have us use Google+, though it doesn’t work at all the same way.
The thing is the users of Google Reader are power users, and they still drive much more site traffic than Google+ does. And they are the journalists and power users and bloggers. And it is us that drives people to sites, and drives links on sites like Google+ and Facebook, so Google is effectively shooting themselves in the foot without any forward thinking.
I totally agree with the sentiment. It is the same kind of Hubris as Apple giving up on it’s power users without releasing a new MacPro in years! Power users may not themselves be a huge sales market, but they are in fact a huge driver of others users and the internet in general.
And to drive those users away from your services may not hurt in the short run, but it will hurt in the long run. Who of us will trust Google to keep it’s services around? Will Blogger be next? How about Gmail? Calendar? What service will Google drop next? And the more users that leave, the less money Google makes over advertising, and reading their data, and it will make them more irrelevant!
App Storm has an article on Google Reader going down and some alternatives that I have not heard anywhere else. A must read! I didn’t realize that Pinboard could import your starred pages from Google Reader! Very nice! And I have never even heard of the self hosted Fever! App Storm has an awesome review of it as well. Going to have to look into that!
So the Save Google Reader Petition at Change.org has reached 100,000 signatures! Lets see it make 150,000! And hope that Google is listening, though I doubt it!