As I mentioned in a previous post, Google Reader is going away. If you don’t use RSS feeds, this service may be mystifying to you, but think of it this way: imagine, instead of getting a bunch of Facebook, Google+ or Twitter randomized micro-posts, you could get a steady stream of high-quality articles just from the people you like and admire? Yeah. RSS. It’s like that.
So anyway, the Reader shutdown. I have a lot of thoughts about that, as do many other people, but the first one is: what the heck do I do? I use Reader on average about seven times a day. I’m certainly not going to hope Google change their minds, and even if they do, my trust is gone. Fortunately, there are a number of alternatives, which people have blogged about here and here.
The one I want to report on today is The Old Reader, the first one I tried. AWESOME. In more detail, this is what I found:
- It has most, though not all, features of Google Reader. It’s got creaky corners that sometimes make it look like features are broken, but as I’ve dug into it, almost everything is there and works pretty great.
- It was able to import all my feeds I exported via Google Takeout. Their servers are pretty slow, so it actually took a few days, and they did it two passes. But they sent me an email when it was done, and they got everything.
- The team is insanely responsive. They’re just three guys – but when I found a problem with the Add Subscription button, they fixed it in just a couple of days. Amazing. More responsive than other companies I know.
There are drawbacks, most notably: they don’t yet have an equivalent for Google Takeout’s OPML export. But, they are only three guys. They just started taking money, which is a good sign that they might stay around. Here’s hoping they are able to build a business on this, and that they have the same commitment to openness that Google had.
I plan to try other feed readers, as I can’t be trapped into one product as I was before, but kudos to The Old Reader team for quickly and painlessly rescuing me from the First Great Internet Apocalypse of 2013. I feel like I’m just using Reader, except now I have a warm fuzzy that my beloved service isn’t going to get neglected until it withers away.
-the Centaur
