This snapshot is from my site statistics, showing which news readers people use when viewing this blog, covering the last few weeks. As I’m sure you can imagine, I’m a little concerned hearing Google is discontinuing Google Reader.
Since I don’t want to loose you all as readers, does anyone have any suggestions on what I can do to help you switch to something else?
In case you were wondering, this is why many people save their own seeds, to keep seed companies from causing problems when they discontinue varieties…
I’ve transferred to feedly. It’s set up to transfer your Reader subscriptions with a minimum of fuss.
I’ve just switched to The Old Reader ( theoldreader.com ) which is very similar to google reader. But if there’s some sort of open source alternative I’d be really glad to know about it. As you said it’s nice to not be at the mercy of the “seed company” as it were.
I’m pondering this one too Patrick. Your commenters have mentioned the 2 readers I’ve seen mentioned the most since I saw the announcement. It also depends on what options are offered in the RSS button & what replaces Google Reader when that goes.
I’m expecting the numbers to go down too, but I also wonder how many of my ‘Readers’ are actually still reading anyway, especially the older signups.
I’m planning a post on this very subject soon, with some options I’ve not seen mentioned elsewhere…
On my Linux desktop I’ve used akregator in the past. I’ve been less than happy with this, and in particular once you have a lot of feeds it gets unstable and slow.
On my Android phone I currently use feedr, and this is okay, but it’s pretty small and simple. I only have a few feeds right now. I tried flipboard, but got tired of all the embedded advertising.
Since nothing I’ve used so far shows up in my site statistics, I assume lots of other people are using readers installed directly on their own computers that I just can’t see. Also, neither feedly or The Old Reader seem to be showing up in my site statistics, so I might be missing lots of others too. I guess these readers just don’t identify themselves.
I’ll be watching out for your post VP!
I’ve switched to Netvibes. Seems to be working fine so far.
I have gone to Bloglovin, they transfer all your blogs for you.
I looked at Feedly but they were swamped so I’ve not been back to try again. There are a few suggestions here too that I’m going to try. http://www.zdnet.com/goodbye-google-reader-here-are-five-rss-alternatives_p5-7000012604/
I switched to old reader. I tried it and feedly and old reader appeared to better replicate the way I use google reader. It ain’t the same though 🙁
At last my post is up 🙂
I’ve found that Feedburner doesn’t give the complete picture. The Old Reader stats are showing up in there, but I only see bloglovin’ and feedly via my site stats. I suspect they’re aggregated together in one of the other lines in Feedburner’s stats.
Bloglovin’, Feedly, The Old Reader and Netvibes are the front runners according to my stats, but that might not be representative!
I’ve also offered some alternatives to readers. I’m particularly looking for input on whether the WordPress Follow button can be used to read blogs other than WordPress ones. If you have any info on that, it would be great 🙂
I hope your seed network gets off the ground – it’s a splendid idea and reminiscent of the blogger get togethers you so kindly put together here in the UK.