A Little Reader Update

Since hearing Google Reader is retiring, I ran out and signed up for some replacements and never looked back.

I tried The Old Reader - which looked promising, but ultimately I got too tired of waiting for my subscriptions to import and I gave up on it. Not only was the import queue taking weeks, but my position in the line didn't remain constant - after waiting 24 hours from beginning my import, I actually had more people in line before my turn than I did the day before when I started. That might just have been a little blip, but after waiting for two weeks and still not having my subscriptions in, I gave up on the import. And by then, I had enough confidence in my other alternatives that I canceled my account as well. If I end up reader shopping again, I'd love to come back to it and see how it really functions, but I didn't have the time to wait around for it right now.

I started off with Bloglovin. Converting everything over wasn't terribly painful once I found the option for importing my subscriptions, but things were less simple once I started getting organized. Anything not immediately identifiable by the first three words Bloglovin brought up or that hadn't updated in a week got deleted because I had no way of finding out what it was. Which overall, probably wasn't bad for me, but I would have felt better if I'd been able to double check those sites (I'm sure there's a way to go to the site if it hasn't updated in a week, but I couldn't find it at the time). Ultimately, I liked the overall look, and things mostly ran as I expected, but my biggest problem was having to visit the sites in their own windows if I wanted to read the entire thing. If I only followed a few blogs, or things that updated less often, this wouldn't be a problem for me - and it would really encourage me to comment more - but when I've often got 500 things to look at a night, and I'm sharing internet with 5-8 users, that's not a reasonable solution.

Which led me to try Feedly - and despite it being slightly less familiar to drive, I stayed. The import was painless, the sorting was fairly easy (though not ideal), and best of all - I can usually read the entire post without opening a new window (depending on the post's settings). It's not perfect - sometimes it refreshes in the middle of something and I lose the article I was actively reading. And sure, I'm aware that Feedly uses Google Reader right now, and I'm a little worried how that'll play out in the upcoming months, but I'm very hopeful that this will continue to work out for me. I did cut out a few blogs from my master list over at Google Reader, and between that, my new organizations, and the controls at Feedly, I've really cut down the amount of time I'm spending reading online.

So the real question is, if Google Reader were going to live, would I go back? Honestly... no. I do miss many of the articles and things I had saved there, but I've spent a few hours going through my archives there, pinning things worth saving, and I've moved on now.