![]() ![]() In practice these recommendations were hit or miss at times, but the beta build we’ve been testing is unfinished. In Digg Reader’s “popular” section, the service scans your feeds and then ranks them with one, two or three dots to help you discover trending articles. Though initially, the team has been working to launch something that offers the core RSS reading experience, the plan is to bring the RSS reader into the modern age by alerting users to what’s most popular among their network and better connect users with. However, in some cases, they’re changes for the better (like the option to set the default view by category).īetaworks’ quickly built take on Google Reader is the new kid on the block, and has a lot of potential to be a viable Feedly competitor. There will be little things here and there that you’ll need to get used to, of course (like the “t” shortcut no longer lets you tag items, but rather tweets them). That being said, it’s hard to find a lot of fault with Feedly, and the company is quickly working to add the few missing pieces. In addition, though the company offers clients for web and mobile, the mobile apps are still somewhat over-designed with big, colorful category headers instead of the basic list of folders like Google Reader. That’s still in the works, the company says, but it’s a big undertaking to deliver upon. What’s wrong: Feedly currently pulled out its “search” functionality, which lets you pull up content by keyword or topic - something that’s one of the top user requests today. It also supports a number of Google Reader’s features, including support for many of the same keyboard shortcuts, tagging, favorites (“Saved for Later”), and “Mark as Read” functionality to quickly plow through categories. The service’s “Titles Only” view (which can be set globally in Preferences) offers the same sort of compact view, perfect for headline-scanning action, that Google Reader once provided. Why Feedly: Google Reader users will love Feedly because it comes closest to mirroring the Google Reader experience, and it offers a number of settings that can be tweaked to your liking. Feedly is one of the few to step in and serve that need. These apps had only offered a front-end RSS browsing experience, which means they needed someone else’s API to function. Last week, it announced a reach of 12 million users as it officially launched “Feedly Cloud,” a backend infrastructure to power the ecosystem of RSS reader client applications like Reeder, Press, Nextgen Reader, Newsify, gReader, and more, left abandoned by Google’s exit from RSS. The Only Real Contenders So Far: Feedly & Diggįeedly has been building its RSS product for years, which gives it a huge head start in this space. *50 million: Digg’s estimate of those who care about RSS. Though some come close, none have completely nailed the experience yet. In the wake of the impending shutdown, a number of alternatives have sprung up to offer a “replacement” for Google Reader. Journalists, bloggers, programmers, technically savvy IT workers, researchers, students, startup founders, and anyone else who has grown accustomed to a simple product that lets you – not algorithms or tweets – be in control of which news sources to track and which stories to read. No one cares about RSS feeds, except for maybe 50 million of the Internet’s most voracious news readers*. ![]() You don’t have to go home, folks, but you can’t stay here. It’s the digital equivalent of bringing up the house lights when the rock concert is over. As users up until the bitter end, we can no longer complain about these events because Google doesn’t care – it’s shutting down Google Reader on July 1 and we all have to leave. Over the past few days, buttons have broken, marking feeds as read seemed to take a bit longer than usual, and the Android mobile website on some devices shifted over to the desktop view with no way to change things back. ![]()
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