The closest experience to Google Reader is Bazqux. Literally two clicks and I had an account with all of my Google Reader feeds imported (since I created an account by logging in via the same Google account that my RSS feeds are linked to).
There’s a $30 free trial, and then it’s $9 (or more if you like) per year.
The website is super fast, it has the same general feel that Google Reader does although it’s missing some of the customized functionality that I got used to in Reader (or at least in a few minutes of playing I haven’t found it yet).
Only downside is that it doesn’t have its own mobile app, it’s feeds are compatible with other apps but there’s no ‘Bazqux’ I can download in the Google Play store.
The other great replacement, it seems to me, is Newsblur — you can have a limited (up to 64 feeds) free account or $24 a year for premium. They do have iOS and Android apps.
Both are more functional, and more navigable, than Feedly which became immediately popular. I just don’t like feedly.
Google Reader goes away July 1. That’s a big deal for me, because it’s the way that I keep up with a myriad of blogs — both miles, points and travel and also others of interest to me.
Some blogs will benefit. It’ll mean more people clicking on their websites, instead of reading their feeds, so they’ll make a bit more on display ads. Other sites will lose out — simply because people who read them in RSS won’t read them anymore. Their Google Reader subscribers won’t come back. This is especially true for blogs that don’t update regularly (who remembers to check in on a blog once a week or once a month? a subscription put the new post front and center).
I have a pretty good number of readers who follow me via RSS, and I hope all of you continue to read in a form other than Google Reader after the end of the month. There are several ways to do it — checking in here at ViewFromTheWing.com of course, following me on Facebook or Twitter, subscribing to my daily emails, or selecting a new RSS reader.
For those of you that have been Google Reader users: what is your post-June solution?
- You can join the 30,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive posts by email (just one e-mail per day) or subscribe to the RSS feed. It’s free. Don’t miss out!
I am not sure yet. There are rumors about digg and Facebook also building clones.
I find it a little scary to with a small player, as I wouldn’t like the site to be suddenly offline if demand isn’t as high as they expected. So I do prefer something from one of the big players.
I think your feedly URL is broken
The feedly link has an extra period in “dotcom”
Bazqux $30 free trial sound a bit expensive if it’s only $9 a year. Explain?
I tried Newsblur, but didn’t like it in the slightest. In fact, I tried over a dozen, but I kept coming back to Feedly. There are negatives to it, but on the whole, it does the best of the lot IMHO.
My biggest gripe with a lot of feed readers is that they do not allow for scrolling or searching many months or even years in the past. They often stop at 100 posts or 30 days or something like that. I often will want to look up something, or scroll back through older posts, and don’t like have to visit the blog. Feedly does a pretty good job in this department.
My $0.02.
I had tried a handful of replacements and didn’t find anything I really liked. So I am looking at your suggestion of BazQux. It feels fragile but has the best features and interface so far.
I’m terribly old-fashioned and read via a desktop application, not a web interface. In my case I use an application called NewNewsWire for OS X. It’s just amazingly good, and I’ll be sad either the day it stops working or the day RSS just isn’t useful.
I just can’t stand facebook or twitter for this purpose – it’s just too hard to consume the same signal-to-noise ratio information. Most people post personal and conversation – so this blog wouldn’t be “the blog” but “25 posts a day so we can see every connecting flight Gary makes.”
Anyway, I highly recommend NewNewsWire – they make it for iOS and OS X and it’s just perfect.
What’s Google Reader?
I lived off of google reader and i am very frustrated by its demise. its beauty was in its simplicity but everything has to have loads of bling these days. tons of bells and whistles on an RSS reader defeats the exact purpose of it. i want simple, plain, boring, and FAST.
@QWE: google reader is an RSS feed reader http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rss
@Graydon: gary obviously means a 30 day, not 30 dollar, free trial.
i’m now using feedly which is pretty good. it’s free, has a chrome browser app as well as android and iOS apps. it’s pretty simple, fast, configurable. best substitute for g-reader that i’ve found but if i find better i would happily switch.
I’ve tried feedly and like it well enough, but it’s Kindle fire app doesn’t work well (at least not for me). When you click through to the website to few the post you are reading, it won’t open the keyboard to allow you to leave a comment or anything. It’s very frustrating. If reading on my kindle, which I do most of the time, I have to save the post then go back to read again on the computer if I want to leave a comment, enter a sweepstakes, whatever. There aren’t many other RSS readers apps for the Kindle Fire so I think I’m stuck with it for now.
There is an app (beta) which supports BazQux. You can get it here
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/g_reader/fNwf_UvqpCQ
Geek solution: I installed tt-rss (Tiny Tiny RSS) on my web hosting service (Dreamhost). It has a nice web interface and there are multiple options for Android app access. It’s free. Very little computer knowledge is required, but you do need to be able to use a command line, follow a readme, and troubleshoot a couple installation things. Best of all, it’s free.
Anyone have a solid replacement for iGoogle?
Damn, I thought I was one of your two favorite blog readers …
And all this time I thought I was your favorite blog reader. 😀
I am now trying out Curata, FeedReader and Bloglines. Backup plan is The Old Reader if none of these work. I tried feedly, found it too feature rich.
The Old Reader for me.
I dread the day. I have not looked at alternatives…I will move to Feedly just because most like it and they appear to be an established (read: not a startup that may go poof in the blink of an eye) company…well, more established than all the others I think.
I am wary on jumping on any new google products from the day they announced the death of beloved Google Reader
Here’s vote #2 for the Old Reader. Very simple desktop interface. I wish they had a phone app as good as Google Reader, but maybe someday.
Feedly and Netvibes were both duds for me.
Vijay, Pawan from Curata here. Let me us what you think of Curata Reader (@CurataReader).
I’m trying your newsblur link and it won’t let me past the page for entering credit card info…how do I get the free version?
@Mizliz – you have to wait a short period of time
Couple things. Feedly seems to work pretty darn well. they’ve upped their development and features dramatically in the past couple months. Mobile clients are all there, although I don’t like the UI as much. I prefer MORE information to the flipboard style tiles. but it’s free too.
A number of people seem to like inoreader. Very simple interface, chrome extensions, sync all feeds, etc. It is pretty light weight, but I think the closest to the original reeder product..
also, based on rumblings I have heard up and down the peninsula, we MIGHT get a stay of execution as google or some spin out chooses to try and further capitalize on the dissatisfied 500K+ disgruntled users.
Never understood what was wrong with reading web sites in a web browser…guess i am so 1995!!!
I have switched over to Reeder (Mac, IOS) and actually prefer it to Google Reader. The feed import is clean, the interface is intuitive and attractive. Best of all it is free for Mac and iPad.
I just keep putting my head in the sand hoping the amazing developer behind NewsRob will come up with a solution before switch off! I use the app daily and will be lost without it. I’ve tried Feedly but found it nowhere as efficient as NR – I subscribe to quite a few blogs and it makes it so quick to sort through them (and quickly mark as read any credit card posts given their irrelevance this side of the Atlantic!)
Check out The Old Reader. It is under active improvement and the developers have really gotten things under control since they had a major influx of users when Google Reader’s demise was announced. theoldreader.com
What I’ll miss most about Google Reader is its offline capabilities; I spend a lot of time underground and that’s the best time to be going through a reader. Do any of these have that?
The Digg Reader looks very promising: http://blog.digg.com/post/53203926175/digg-reader-update
Beta opens on the 26th, public access should be a few weeks later. Indeed, too late to directly move over after Google unplugs the original service..
Vienna on OSX is a pretty solid, open-source (read:free) project.
All the cool kids are using http://www.commafeed.com pretty much a 1-to-1 port of Google Reader and (of course) free.
I have been using theoldreader.com, which is pretty close to google reader in terms of look and feel. It’s relatively slow on the update, but so far I don’t mind it.
try cloud version of FEEDLY which just came out.
The latest feedly seemed like an improvement over what Gary panned (I particularly appreciated free, having desktop, and iOS support), BUT I just learned it doesn’t export feeds to an OPML file — which is a major shortcoming!!! — so, just as I was ready to commit, I’m rethinking (quickly given the date). I don’t want to be wedded to a service that won’t let me migrate my feeds into another, and AFAIK OPML is the standard way one does that.