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| Joy of Tech gets it right |
Being fellow bloggity bloggers, many of you no doubt have heard that Google is retiring its Google Reader RSS service in order to focus on a more limited number of important and popular** products... like Google+ *insert sarcastic tone*. I don't know about you, but the decision to retire Reader has me quite nervous. I know many of you follow me through Google. Is that link going to break once the service goes away? Will my meagerly climbing readership plunge off a cliff?
I am not just concerned from a blog author standpoint, but also as a reader and a researcher. Google Reader is one of those tabs that is always open on my desktop throughout the day. A big part of my job involves keeping up with events in the aerospace industry, particularly those involving space exploration. Unfortunately, big media outlets often get these stories wrong, and don't even cover some of the significant, but less public happenings in the industry. Therefore, I turn to certain blogs to help me do my job well. I also keep up with most of the blogs I follow for fun using Reader, and I am worried about my ability to keep up with all the awesome writers I follow.
Right now, I am looking for an alternative feed reader that will allow me to sync across my workplace and home computers. This is harder than you might think! Unfortunately, many reader services sync by using Google Reader as their back-end. When that goes away, they cease to function. I've done some searching, and am currently leaning towards Feedly as my new reader of choice. At the moment, Feedly does all it's syncing through Google Reader, but they are actively working to develop their own, independent back end. Hopefully they will have it rolled out by July, and hopefully it wont suck. If it works, I should be able to continue following all the lovely blogs I read without a whole lot of interruption.
Do you currently follow blogs via Google Reader? Do you have suggestions for getting past Readgnarok?
**Google+ still has a smaller user base than Reader
Yeah, I was a bit peeved when I learned about this Google Reader nonsense. I use the FeeddlerRSS app on my iPhone. Its not as good as Reader and I'm looking for another replacement. I'm not so much worried about the readership on my own blog as much as I am that I'm going to miss a lot of good reads in my feed.
ReplyDeleteSame here, all of it. I always have it open and I'm worried about whats going to happen to blog readership in general when its gone. I'm planning on transfering over to Feedly at some point, we'll see how it all plays out.
ReplyDeleteSarah Allen
(From Sarah, With Joy)