FeedlyIt’s unfortunate news, but it’s inevitable—and worthless to sulk about any longer. Let’s face it: Google Reader will be no more in less than a month from now—on July 1, to be exact. Will this effect you too?

I’ve used and continue to regularly use Reader for years, so for me this is the ‘not good’ kind of change. Starting while I was in college, Google’s RSS feed app was the first and only service of its kind that mattered to me. I loved what it did for me, helping to redefine how I handled research academically and, of course, leisurely.

So, is there a feeling of loyalty for Reader? Sure there is. In fact, it’s a feeling paralleled with my aversion for soon seeing it decay in the Internet graveyard. But could there be another, more useful RSS aggregator for me (us) out there?

Feedly thinks so. In fact, an article posted to the company’s blog last Tuesday provides a rundown of what the team has been working hard on. Collecting insight from user comments and requests, Feedly will roll out some new and interesting features to their app, right in time for Reader’s end-times.

Most important, Feedly mentioned, is speed. The Feedly team wants its app to be the most streamlined RSS feed on the market—and so do we. To achieve this, they brought on “great people on both the dev and ops sides.” Another  re-introduced feature to Feedly’s UX will be the ability to search within the app. It existed at first, but was recently dropped to smooth out kinks within the application.

FeedlyFeedly is proud to announce the rolling out of their application to Windows Phone and Windows 8 users, as well as a ‘pure web’ version—both requested via their uservoice survey system. They’ve improved group sharing and fixed some buggy glitches that were reported.

Now, what’s of interest to me—though the company only briefly mentioned it in the aforementioned blog post—was the announcement of some pretty substantial partnerships. Other apps on the market similar to Feedly are on board: ReederPressNextgen ReaderNewsify and gReader will lend developers to help with the project. Together they plan to roll out the new and improved Feedly “before Google Reader retires”.

Seems like I’m going to have to agree with Feedly on this one. They’ve stepped up in a big way already. Within the last 60 days, they’ve accomplished a lot, and they truly seem ready to be the Web’s new favorite RSS reader.

Right now, I’m a stranger to Feedly, but I’ll be getting myself an advanced pre-demise-of-Reader experience so that I’m prepared for the change.

All hail the new RSS king.

Any thoughts?

• This post originally appeared on GadgeTell, a TeleRead sister-site.

NO COMMENTS

  1. I’ve tried Feedly and I personally found it too slow, too social, and not close enough to how Google Reader efficiently worked to be a good replacement. I did get an e-mail from the Feedly president asking for feedback and I replied but haven’t gotten a response back.

    At first, I liked switching back to Bloglines which I used pre-Google Reader, but now I’m finding it cumbersome – it shrinks the screen when I switch between feeds, it logs me out at odd times and is slowing down when you have over 100 articles in a feed.

    I recently heard of InoReader on another site and so far I’m liking it – similar speed to Google Reader, I can turn off the social functions, it has mobile apps, and it is free.

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