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Tech Sunday, March 17th 2013 at 12:00 pm

Dump Google Reader for Feedly, All the Cool Kids Are Doing It

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The news that Google is shutting down Google Reader on July 1st of this year shook the Internet to its core this week. For many (like us here at Geekosystem) it is the go-to feed aggregator that made looking deep into the heart of the online world possible from one window, and the news of its demise has us wondering what we’ll do next. For many, what they’ll do next is dump Google Reader and switch over to Feedly, and in fact half a million people already switched in only two days.

Having a sudden influx of 500,000 new users can be a lot to handle for any site, but Feedly seems willing to meet the challenges needed to greet lost Googlers with open arms. In a blog post, they said they are committed to keeping the site up and running despite the big jump in numbers.

Feedly isn’t content to just continue existing while hundreds of thousands of new users flock to their shores. They also said they are committed to adding new features, and to taking suggestions from new users about what they would like those features to be. Our guess for the number one suggestion Feedly is likely see from form Google Reader users? “Make this more like Google Reader.”

I gave into peer pressure and signed up for Feedly. All my Google Reader info transfered over nicely without much effort on my part. The only problem I’ve noticed is that my lists of sites are out of order for reason, and I’m have trouble rearranging them in Feedly. That’s minor, and it’s not the kind of thing people do all the time, so I’m willing to live with a little frustration.

The major difference I’ve noticed between Reader and Feedly is that Feedly is beautiful, which actually doesn’t help it at all. We don’t use an RSS reader because we want a beautiful layout, we use an RSS reader to see the most Internet in a single sitting as possible. Feedly gives a few featured articles at the top of each page, but I’d rather just get right to a list of headlines I can skim through.

Feedly’s not perfect, but it’s a good option for anyone left without an RSS reader come July 2nd, and everyone else is doing it, so that must mean it’s cool. That’s how things work, right?

(Feedly via The Verge, image via luccawithcheese)

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  • Pouet

    You can see just the headlines or have a “google reader” view in feedly, you can switch in the options.

    My only problem with it is that it is not full screen.

  • alexbhatt

    Feedly allows for a ton of customization, one of those is taking it and giving it that list view. You can do this for folders of feeds, individually and globally. Honestly I wish I knew about feedly before, so far I am quite impressed with it.

  • tmkorn

    There is a way to use custom CSS to make it much closer to full screen. I installed Stylish and found customizations already made. You don’t even need to know code to do that. I also got rid of that right sidebar that was annoying me.

  • http://geekosystem.com/ Glen Tickle

    Thanks, I’ll play around with it some more.

  • http://www.facebook.com/stephen.feller Stephen Feller

    You can get a list view in Feedly. Check out the options, it’s there and it works just as well as Reader.

  • Luiz Souza

    “Make this more like Google Reader.”

    That’s the point…simplicity!

  • Bill Stewart

    I tried Feedly, but it doesn’t support Opera. Netvibe is decent, but no native mobile clients. Also tried HootSuite, but it can’t mark content as read. Digg is supposedly working on a reader. For me, I need desktop and mobile support using the cloud for synchronization.

  • http://geekosystem.com/ Glen Tickle

    Thanks Stephen. I’ve played around with it a bit more since writing this article and it’s working out pretty well for me. I’d still rather see Reader stick around, but that’s just because it’s what I’m already used to.

  • http://twitter.com/fuzzybee7 Eric Nguyen

    Can’t tell enough how much I love the new Feedly,, Feedly has been cool for a while but the list view is the key,, the bright theme makes it way more pleasant to the eyes compared to my former favourite Pulse