Who knew that Google's decision to shutter their RSS reader would spawn so many replacements? Since the announcement back in March, we've seen several clones launch or promise to do so in the coming weeks. Now we can add AOL's name to that growing list as the company launched their own reader earlier today.
AOL Reader, described as bringing all your favorite websites together in one place, is now available on the desktop as well as mobile devices. The service can easily import your entire Google Reader library and allows users to share content across social networks like Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.
Functionality to save articles for later and tag articles for archiving comes baked right in. Developers will appreciate an available API to facilitate the creation of third party apps.
To get started, you simply need to sign up using an AOL account. If you don't already have one, you can create one free of charge beforehand. From there, you'll be asked to add new subscriptions or import ones already in use from other services - like Google Reader. AOL offers multiple pre-selected categories to choose from that are already populated with poplar websites in that genre.
Naturally, you can add your own or remove others from the list at will. Once subscribed, new stories will appear in your feed with the most recent stories being shown first.
While there's no doubt that many are sad to see Google Reader go, there's also no denying the impact that it will have on the reader community as a whole. More options are always welcomed and with any luck, perhaps some new innovative features will stick and become commonplace.