(all three of you)
Have you ever blinked and an entire month has gone by? I completely missed June. I know it happened- Father’s Day, my mom came to visit, the kids got out of school; but I’m pretty sure we just celebrated Easter.
Anyway, the end of June brings the end of Google Reader. I’ve been meaning to post an update on this, but like I said June flew by and the end of the month caught me by surprise as well.
What this means for you
From my rough tracking, a majority of my subscribers follow me through Network Blogs and/or Google Friend Connect (used to be networked users on Blogger) so this won’t affect you. The RSS feed (if you use it) should still work as it gives you multiple options besides Google Reader.
But if you use Google Reader to follow my blog then you need to find a replacement ASAP.
I just imported my subscriptions over to Feedly (there’s a helpful automatic import button that will do this automatically for you) but I haven’t used it enough to say one way or another whether I like it. It is the number one recommended replacement it seems, so there’s that.
Because I rely on my iPhone/iPad for remote reading I was also able to import my subscriptions into Pulse and Flipboard; both are good for different reasons. (See my post on Social Media for why I use what)
I wish I could be more helpful, but I’m navigating through this as well. I’m not 100% sold on Feedly, but Flipboard and Pulse are working pretty well. (Although I haven’t tried to add any subscriptions to either since importing my Google Reader subs)
More Tips
For other tips, here are a couple of links for you. I thought I had more bookmarked from when Google made this announcement, but I guess not.
- Matt Dabbs: Reminder, Google Reader Dies July 1
- Matt Dabbs: Switching from Google Reader to Feedly
- Copyblogger: How to Cope with the Death of Google Reader
- Faith Engineer: Making the Switch to Feedly
Sorry for the late notice. Good luck!
I subscribe to your feed via RSS, so I won't lose you 🙂
Rick, what do you use to manage your RSS feeds? RSS never made sense to me until I started using Google Reader. And the I found Flipboard and Pulse, but both relied on my Google Reader account to feed those Apps. So we'll see what happens when I open them up tomorrow.
Frank, I use a program called FeedDemon – works like a charm for me, and it is free. For me, the pro side of the equation is a con for others: I don't like popping open a new browser window when I can have a separate app running. I just downloaded a copy to my laptop – the program is old now, but still works fine. Google FeedDemon and you should find plenty of links to it, or I can send you a copy 🙂
Thanks! I saw that reviewed in a few places as a possible replacement. I never actually used Google Reader as my "reader" per se, just as my source for feeds to my other Apps (Flipboard and Pulse) so when I read reviews of Feedly or FeedDemon that compare to Google Reader, it doesn't really help me much. So for now I'm test driving Feedly and we'll see how it goes.