Weekend Open Forum: Do you use an RSS aggregator?

Matthew DeCarlo

Matthew DeCarlo

Posts: 5,271   +104
Staff

As you've likely heard, Google's doing some spring cleaning and Google Reader is among the handful of services being kicked to the curb. Although the seven year old web feed aggregator has many loyal followers -- more than 100,000 of which have signed this petition pleading with Google to keep the service alive -- the company says interest in the product has been declining for years and it's simply time to pull the plug.

Assuming that's the case across the board (folks being less interested in aggregators), we're wondering how many of you still regularly use RSS for news. If you're a Google Reader user as some of our staff members are, where will you go come July 1? For those of you using other services, now's a great time to preach their virtues and induct some of Google's castaways. If you don't use news feeds, is there any particular reason why?

RSS pic via GrandeDuc/Shutterstock

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/51959-weekend-open-forum-do-you-use-an-rss-aggregator.html

 
Yes, that is how I learned all my tech knowledge throughout the years... RSS opened up my eyes to the tech world. I was so devastated to see it go. Hopefully Digg's service will be as good or even better. I dont like the feedly layout.
 
I use Reeder every day on my laptop and phone. The service syncs with Google Reader so obviously I was concerned about the planned shut down, but they've already said the app will continue working beyond July 1 (though they haven't said exactly what their plan is).
 
Jos said:
I use Reeder every day on my laptop and phone. The service syncs with Google Reader so obviously I was concerned about the planned shut down, but they've already said the app will continue working beyond July 1 (though they haven't said exactly what their plan is).
Click to expand...
People say this app is good, but I have used Newsify for about 2 years now, I cant switch since it is the perfect RSS reader, you should check it out it is free at the moment.

Edit: I hope Newsify has a back up plan or I will be forced to move to Reeder.
 
I used reader for a good 4 years until recently I switch to another of google services. I find google currents to be more practical since I am always on the move.
 
I started using it everyday recently (the past 4 months), and I can't believe google is dropping reader. It's just that good at getting me the news I want and finding more news that's like the news I already read.

I'm extremely saddened to see it go, even if I didn't use it very long. I hope there's a good replacement, because I CANNOT go back to reading news the way I did before, it's just so much more ineffective to go back to...
 
I assume this will not effect me, as I use Windows Live Mail for reading my RSS Feeds. Please correct me, if I'm wrong.
 
I have been using Feedly today and like it. Tried Newsblur yesterday looks good but does not seem to work. I have concerns if Feedly can really pull off the seamless transition they are talking about.
 
Liveclick for Firefox is all I use. The developer finally updated it to work with FF 17 and newer :)
 
I'm a google reader user and I was floored by the news. I use it ritually everyday and don't want to see it go. Don't no if the petition will have any effect, but I signed it anyways and hope other users will too.
 
No. I don't.

I did use Google Reader some, a while ago, but what happened was I wouldn't check it for a few days and suddenly be overwhelmed with information. Then I felt like I was intentionally (which I was) dismissing potential good stories by highlighting all and marking as read. It was better for me to just live in ignorance of all the new stuff I was missing than actively see how much I was missing.

tl;dr - Felt bad for unbolding all the stuff I didn't have time to read.
 
What's an "RSS aggregator".......?:D

Um, I guess that would be a "no", huh?

You people do realize you can overdose on news the same as any other drug, right?

I haven't even watched much of the TV news recently. I mean really, is a hard core heathen, pagan, and atheist supposed to get all psyched up waiting for smoke signals from the Vatican?

Truth to tell, I thought smoke signals, as a reliable method of communication, went out of style when we killed off the majority of the Indians.

Come to think of it, does anybody know if the Indians used smoke signals when they elected a new pope?:confused:

That wasn't very nice was it....? so sorry.
 
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Yes, until now I used Google Reader for my daily news and now I switched to feedly.com which is much better. I imported my RSS feeds from Google Reader. The transition went smooth.
 
I use gReader on my phone and FeedDemon on desktop.
Obviously with this I have to search for another app.
 
I have never used or quite understood RSS, I figure it's like I'm too lazy to use Google to search for whatever may interest me a given morning, instead I have it come to me, sort of assuming I'm going to like what's going to arrive. I hardly ever listen to radio stations for the same reason, I don't like other people choosing what I'm about to hear. I don't subscribe to stuff, I search for stuff.
 
I use gReader on my phone every day, keeps me enlightened on the commute to work.

I know Google Reader doesn't make Google any money, but neither do a lot of their other services and I thought the whole reason why Google invest in all these side projects was to get people onto the Google ecosystem and win customer admiration.
 
NewsBlur. I signed up for it. It's pretty fast. The iOS apps suck, but the web interface is nice. Hopefully programs like Reeder will support it soon.
 
Viewing a website through its RSS feeds wont display the ads on that particular sites page... less ads displayed is bad for Google. I think that is whats behind google readers death.
 
You may be right about it being an ad thing, Google just yanked all of the ad blocking Android apps from it's Play store.
 
iGoogle is my home page. It's a great way to catch up on recent news from multiple sites all on one page. It's going away on November, and I don't know what I'll replace it with. I tried using RSS readers, but they all feel cumbersome by comparison, forcing me to move between sites and scroll a lot, whereas iGoogle shows me about 10 sites at a glance without scrolling, and a total of a couple of dozens with scrolling.
 
Guest said:
Viewing a website through its RSS feeds wont display the ads on that particular sites page...
Click to expand...

That may be true, but iGoogle gets me to view more tech sites web pages than I would otherwise. Granted it's not a normal RSS reader, so probably encourages it more, but Google is still killing it too.
 
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