Like everyone else, I am saddened by the news that Google Reader will be shuttered. Ah well, you get what you pay for, I guess.
The real lesson here is that Google was unable to make any money from advertising on the RSS feeds. In fact, one might argue that they lost money because people were not going onto the sites to view the regular ads.
I wonder if this will be the start of a greater shakeout in the internet, as all these site/places that can't cover their costs start closing. It would be kind of sad, but at the same time, it would be nice to get rid of the "everything on the internet should be free" expectations that so many people seem to have.
Hmm, I wonder if I should be concerned about Blogger getting shut down.
Oh well, time to look for a decent alternative RSS reader.
I doubt you have to be concerned about Blogger closing, I reckon it might fall into the category of too big to fail.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand it isn't ever a bad idea to have a contingency plan in place.
Let us know what you find for reader replacements, and make sure to blog about it before they shut down reader :D.
ReplyDeleteI recomend Feedly, if you use a Smartphone or Tablet. I discovered it last night when I started searching for a replacement. They actually just put up an article concerning GReader shutting down: http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/google-reader/
ReplyDeleteFeedly is ok - I've started using NetVibes today.
ReplyDeleteAllows setup of tabs for various different sets of feeds etc. Quite flexible, but i'm still getting used to it.
I think bloglines is using the same system as netvibes.
I use Microsoft Outlook as my feed reader. I do most of my reading at the office.
ReplyDeleteI am very happy with Tiny Tiny RSS. It does all I want, and while the UI is very old-school style, it allows effective browsing and work.
ReplyDeleteThere is one large downside, however: it’s not a service provider, it’s a piece of software. You need a server with a webserver and an SQL database to make it run. If you have that, however, you should definitely check out http://tt-rss.org. (And I just checked the site, and it says they’re temporariliy downgrading to a low-volume website because of too much traffic. I wonder why…)
I am trying out Feedly....just installed it...still sad about the loss of Google Reader
ReplyDeleteI switched to Feedly and it is pretty much identical to GR with the exception of having the super-awesome "subscribe to google reader chrome plug-in" to make subscribing to a site super simple. Apparently, if you log into feedly with your google credentials, your feeds will automatically move to feedly's servers the dat Google shuts down.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the death of GR is going to hurt blogs overall. I don't know how many people used Reader, but I can say for me that without it, I would not be interacting with 200+ blogs a week like I currently do - it is just too hard without an RSS reader. And so many of the alternative readers rely on google RSS to function. Seems to me this will cause a downturn in blog readership and even forums (which I also used Reader for)
ReplyDeleteI primarily use Outlook myself. It's just easy to use... but I too miss the link that automatically adds a feed to Google reader. It was annoying to move my feeds to Outlook. Since I have Windows 8 I was looking for a good RSS reader... Seems the best one so far is My Reader... since it could absorb my already existing list easily. RSS app reader doesn't seem to have that option.
ReplyDelete