Thursday, March 14, 2013

Google Reader Closing!


Back in the day, when I first started blogging, I relied on Bloglines to keep all my blog reading in one place.

Then Bloglines closed down and I kind of, sort of freaked out because I didn't know where else to go.  A couple of bloggers suggested Google Reader, and at first I was a little intimidated because it was completely different to Bloglines.  I did take the plunge and then grew to love it.

Have been using it for a few years now and that's where all my blog feeds reside.

As if I knew this was going to happen, about two months ago, I started moving some of my favorite blogs to my sidebar and use that to visit everyone.  Though I still go to Google Reader at least once or twice a week.

I hadn't been there for about a week and a half and when I logged in this morning, I got the message "Google Reader will close down on July 1, 2013".

UGH!!!!

No real explanation, just that it's closing down.  So now, here we are, a few years later and I have to figure out how to get the hundreds of blog links I have, saved.  And to where? 

I decided to write this post for all of you out there who currently use Google Reader and just found out about the closure, and for those who did not yet know....now you do.

First thing I did was get online and search for alternatives or sites similar to Google Reader, then spent this morning trying out a few places so that I could give you all an alternative.  I need one, but I figured that you all would need one too and I wanted to be able to have something to share to help you through this process.

So, there are a few alternatives out there, like Twitter (though I don't use Twitter so I'm not sure how that would work), Flipboard, Pulse, Feedly, Taptu , Netvibes, Newsblur, The Old Reader.    If you do a quick google search there are many news articles, blog pages etc.  giving out alternatives and other ways to help transition.

I took a look at some, and I will tell you right now that Pulse is not worth it, in my opinion.  It is very iffy and confusing and I could not for the life of me figure out how to add an RSS feed.  Bummer, because I have the app on my Kindle and I know many of you do too, so it would have been ideal.

Feedly
Feedly is a news aggregator or RSS feed reader application for various Web browsers and mobile devices running iOS and Android. It compiles news feeds from a variety of online sources for the user to customize and share with others.

Pulse
The application displays news from multiple RSS feeds in a single page using a tile based interface. Pulse has been praised by users for its sleek, easy to use design.

Flipboard
Flipboard is a social-network aggregation, magazine-format application software for Android and iOS.
It collects the content of social media and other websites and presents it in magazine format and allows users to "flip" through their social-networking feeds and feeds from websites that have partnered with the company.

Taptu
Taptu is a social media and technology company that builds platforms, tools and applications that enable highly personalized creation, curation, recommendation, search, discovery, management, consumption and sharing of content across all personal screen-based devices, and most significantly on touch screen mobile devices, including phones running the operating systems iOS (iPhone) and Android.

The Old Reader
The Old Reader, the ultimate social RSS reader. It's just like the old google reader, only better. We're in beta right now, but we're constantly working on improvements and new features.

Netvibes
Netvibes is a personalized dashboard publishing platform for the Web composed of widgets that are pulled from a widget list open to third party developers.

Newsblur
NewsBlur is a personal news reader bringing people together to talk about the world.
After looking at them all, I've decided to go with Feedly. It's easy to use, it looks like Google Reader and the best part is that it imports all your Google Reader blogs into it.

Feedly is available for a few platforms:
Feedly for iOS
Feedly for Android
Feedly for Chrome
Feedly for Firefox
Feedly for Safari

It was extremely easy.  I went to the website, installed the add on for Firefox (which is the browser I use), and had to restart my browser.  When I did, it immediately opened up for me and all my Google Reader blogs were right there.

Here's a screenshot so you can see what it looks like:


If you want step by step instructions, be sure to visit this page.

I'm really liking it so far, and it's great knowing that when July 1st rolls around I'll be covered and won't lose all my favorite blogs.

I am still finding my way around Feedly, but I do like how it looks and there seems to be a lot of neat functions.


You can organize the blogs, easily remove, change categories etc.


Themes, change the background to whichever color you like.


And I think one of my favorite features so far, is the ability to view each feed in different ways.  Magazine, Mosaic, Cards and Titles.  I've picked Cards which shows you the blogs posts as the picture above.  Love it.

So there you have it.  I do hope I was able to put some of your worries to rest, and give you a few alternatives so that you can start thinking about migrating elsewhere before July 1st.  Nothing like being caught off guard.

If you use something other than Google Reader and think it's a good alternative, feel free to share, it may help someone out :)


EDIT: It was brought to my attention that some of the information in this post is similar to a post on cnet. Yes it is, because that is one of the sites I read this morning while gathering alternatives to share.

So as to not confuse anyone, below are the links to the articles I read, if you want to read them too.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/03/14/google-reader-alternatives/1986865/
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-57574201-233/google-reader-is-dying-but-we-have-five-worthy-alternatives/
http://lifehacker.com/5990456/google-reader-is-getting-shut-down-here-are-the-best-alternatives

www.wikipedia.org

19 comments:

Stacy at Exceedingly Mundane said...

Thanks for all the good info, Sandra! I have used Feedly for a while on my iPad, so I was pretty sure I would stick with it. I also downloaded an app a while back to my Macbook called Cappucino, which I also like. I'm pretty much recommending the same thing to family and friends - Feedly has a lot of platforms, seems really easy to use and they seem to be ready to move into a bigger arena with Google Reader going away.

:)

Judy said...

Oh no, not again! I loved bloglines and I had to get used to Google Reader and came to love it. Thanks for the feed back and reviews...now I have some reading and checking out to do.

Sherri B. said...

I get all of the blogs I follow on my Blogger Dashboard..I imagine that must be what is called the Old Reader. Someone said today, that we will be losing Google Friend Connect too. I don't even know how that would work, as we wouldn't know how many followers we have, etc...

Thank you for taking all of this time to research this and put this post together.

I think I will do a post about all of this for any of my readers who don't know and those that don't know what to do...May I please link them over to you for all of this valuable info? xo

NITA said...

Ugh!!! At this stage I am gong back to pen and paper!!! So tired of changes...until they change that too!!!

Mari said...

Thanks Sandra! I was so upset when I read about Google Reader last night. I'll be checking these out.

FlowerLady Lorraine said...

I simply ready my blog list from blogger. I didn't even realize these readers were out there.

FlowerLady

Unknown said...

I am so old school, I still read everything from my blogger dashboard. What are the advantages of using one of these apps over that?

Unknown said...

Wow, you really know what you're doing! lol. I have been trying to blog for about 6 months and can't really figure it out, plus I son't know anyone who even knows any basics. Its very intimidating and somewhat frustrating, so I just visit around to other blogs of my interest. Good luck on getting things together!!

Susanne said...

I was totally shocked when I logged into Google Reader today! I hate it when this kind of thing happens. Totally stressed when Bloglines did it and now I'm totally stressed with Google Reader doing it. It's such a learning curve for me when things change. Thanks for doing all this legwork. I've already downloaded the zip files just because they said to, but have no idea what to do with them! I don't use readers on anything but my computer so I'll take a peek at your list and go from there I guess. I'll also check Blogger's as well.

Cathy said...

Thank you for sharing this, Sandra. I, too, used Bloglines in the earlier days and hated when I had to change over to Google reader. Now we have to do it all over again. Ugh!

Mari said...

I just signed up with Feedly and I really like it. Thanks! I'm wondering where the option is for the view feed - cards, magazine...

Mari said...

I found it - thanks again!

Conny said...

thank you so much for the info, Sandra ... I panicked when I got the msg about google reader closing!!!! you helped me out! :)

Susanne said...

Well for now I just loaded it all into into my Blogger dashboard. It was easy peasy, just click a couple buttons.

Gammyshouse said...

I use blogger dashboard too. Pretty easy to change over.

gail@more than a song said...

This was annoying when I got that message that it wouldn't be here after July! I'll check your info out...Stacy told me feedly too so soon I'll have to do something about mine.

TheFishie said...

Grrrr! I just found out about Google Reader closing this morning. I love Reader as I follow way too many blogs to possibly hop to the individual blog each day. I just signed up for Feedly and have been playing around with it for the last 30 minutes or so. It looks nice, but it's not as clean and user-friendly as Reader. It's definitely better than nothing. (*sigh)

Melissa said...

Thanks for doing the research and sharing it! I heard about your post from Susanne, who commented earlier.

autumnesf said...

Thanks Sandra! Just found out today and then saw this when I was catching up!!