Google Reader May Trump Bloglines For Me
I’ve been using Bloglines.com for feed reading for a few years now. I had tried Google Reader before, but I was quite happy with Bloglines, so I never switched. I’ve actually been using beta.bloglines.com, their beta site, ever since they made it public. But lately Bloglines has seemed really slow. Clicking on a feed resulted in a multiple second wait before the headlines showed up in the list. That may not sound like a long time, but it really is. And sometimes, clicking on a feed resulted in… nothing. The “working” indicator never went off and I never got headlines. Re-clicking the feed might work, but then the headlines had already been marked as read, so they didn’t show up without an extra click. Sometimes reloading the page was what was called for. Another annoyance was that they kept rearranging the order of my feed folders. I am meticulous about organizing bookmarks and feeds; I have them categorized into folders, and those folders are in alphabetical order in the feed list. And Bloglines keeps moving them around, maybe once every two weeks, for no good reason. Very annoying, indeed. So the other day I decided to give Google Reader another try. I exported all my subscriptions from Bloglines and imported them into Google Reader. Thus far, I’m quite happy. The response time is snappy and I like the fact that I can share things from my feeds into a public list which is available here and that can feed into my FriendFeed feed. I’m going to keep using Google Reader, and while I will check back in on Bloglines occasionally, it looks like I may have found a new feed reader.
Legacy Comments
Jason Kratz — September 6, 2008 at 11:22 PM
When I got my MacBook Pro I started using Netnewswire. Netnewswire on Mac and my iPhone, and Feeddemon on Windows and it all stays in sync via Newsgator (and they’re all free). Used to use Google Reader but that triple play really works well because of the sync.
joeygibson — September 7, 2008 at 8:07 AM
I obviously love my Macs, but I really like having a web-based feed reader. That’s why I’ve been using Bloglines for so long. But Google Reader has really impressed me so much that I’ve completely switched now. I love being able to share things that I read. Those shares get fed into FriendFeed, so they can be seen by an even larger audience, which is cool.