When the news was announced that Google was going to sunset their Reader service on July 1 the cries went up from the RSS subscribing masses. Losing this long time service was a blow to both content consumers and content producers.
Because I am someone who depends on using a Feedreader, an alternative needed to be found. Although I tried a few of the recommended replacements, Newsblur and Netvibes, they just didn’t seem intuitive to either my work flow or my consumption needs. The service that I ultimately have decided upon is Feedly.
I like Feedly for a couple of reasons. First, it was able to import all my RSS subscriptions. This is a good thing because it has taken me years to find them. The bad thing was it imported ALL of my RSS subscriptions, even those who haven’t updated or existed for a few years. Cleanup in Feedly was really easy and went much faster than I would have been able to do it in Reader, so that was a plus. Overall, it was an A+ import experience.
The next thing I really like about Feedly is the way it displays the articles, specifically under the Today tab. While all of my Reader folders were converted to tabs, the Today tab shows what has chronologically been published, as the name implies, Today. As my life has progressed on, I honestly no longer look at the RSS Feeds on a daily basis. It has become more of a weekday activity, while I prefer to spend weekends on content creation instead of consumption. All those weekend posts I’ll get to, but I can automatically be up to date with the happenings of then on Mondays just by looking at Today.
Another important aspect is that I love the way the content appears in Feedly. The way content looks is an important aspect for me, both as a creator and a consumer. Because I use images frequently I was happy to see the way images were displayed with the accompanying content, at least on the RSS Feeds I subscribe to. Because CSS plays such a big roll in how content displays, and RSS Feeds strip all that out, it may not be that way for every feed.
Finally, Feedly has both a web based environment and native apps for both iOS and Android. I like having the native app option as opposed to being stuck in a browser and I love the mobile experience just as much, if not more, than the browser environment.
So don’t leave you’re RSS Feeds out in the cold when Reader sunsets and go sign up for Feedly today!