Bye, bye Bloglines, hello Google Reader
August 29th, 2008
After much comparing, I finally decided to switch from Bloglines to Google Reader. I have used Bloglines for years, and loved it. The ajaxy feel, and a great interface made it a superior product in most respects as a blog reader.
So why am I switching? Because of a major UI flaw, that those smart people at Google have figured a way around. On Bloglines, which you click on a feed to read, particularly one like Techcrunch that has dozens of unread posts, it automatically marks them all as read. This means if I haven't read Techcrunch in days (or weeks), I have to commit to reading hundreds of posts, or I can't click on that feed. However on Google Reader, they use some smart Ajax to mark posts as read *as I scroll*. How cool is that? Now I can click on Techcrunch whenever I want, consume a few posts, and leave. My life just got so much better!
On my Blackberry, this problem gets even worse because if I follow a link off a post to read something, when I go back the feed is now empty, because they were all marked as read on the previous pageview. So I couldn't even follow links!
I've been hoping those Bloglines people would address this, but it appears not. I would bet Google Reader is gaining massive marketshare because of this issue. Maybe they'll see this post and fix it? Probably not, but you never know - I always peruse blogs that write about Goodreads.
So why am I switching? Because of a major UI flaw, that those smart people at Google have figured a way around. On Bloglines, which you click on a feed to read, particularly one like Techcrunch that has dozens of unread posts, it automatically marks them all as read. This means if I haven't read Techcrunch in days (or weeks), I have to commit to reading hundreds of posts, or I can't click on that feed. However on Google Reader, they use some smart Ajax to mark posts as read *as I scroll*. How cool is that? Now I can click on Techcrunch whenever I want, consume a few posts, and leave. My life just got so much better!
On my Blackberry, this problem gets even worse because if I follow a link off a post to read something, when I go back the feed is now empty, because they were all marked as read on the previous pageview. So I couldn't even follow links!
I've been hoping those Bloglines people would address this, but it appears not. I would bet Google Reader is gaining massive marketshare because of this issue. Maybe they'll see this post and fix it? Probably not, but you never know - I always peruse blogs that write about Goodreads.
1 Response to “Bye, bye Bloglines, hello Google Reader”
Sorry, comments are closed for this article.
August 30th, 2008 at 08:35 PM Funny, cuase this blog's rss isn't very compatable with google reader. Try setting the guid tag on each post. We had this same problem on goodreads i think.