Google’s update to Google Reader has caused a lot of anger across the content curation world. No doubt Google Reader powered a large portion of the sharing of content across social networks. On 10/31/2011 they broke that and now force users to share their readings on Google +. As of result of these changes there is a petition with 10,000 signatures. There were articles on this change in Forbes, Atlantic Wire, Washington Post, Mashable, TechCrunch, RWW and beyond.
Personally, – I save Google + for the best of the best and when I want to comment. I used Twitter to share a diverse population of RSS feeds – focused on Cloud Computing and Marketing. These are my passions and the passions of my followers.
It amazes me that Google is so callous – deleting users shares, their contacts, their likes from Google Reader. All this, plus the new interface is being widely criticized “too much white space” and multiple navigation areas are being mentioned most often. Although the old interface was ageing it was built for speed. In fact the team that used to work on Google Reader obsessed over ever pixel: Read this post on the Google Reader Blog on how they found 17 more pixels of reading space! – it It definitely makes you wonder how committed/desperate they are to build a social network. Interestingly if you run a sentiment analysis against Twitter for Google Reader it’s almost all negative today.
http://twittersentiment.appspot.com/search?query=%22google%20reader%22
I suspect the number of Tweets (albeit mostly repetitive) will drop today. I also read that other services are experiencing the affects of this change including: Friendfeed, FlipBoard, Twitterfeed, Deliver.it, Buffer etc.
Also, I tried to “export” my Google Reader “Shares” however the JSON download functionality seems to be under heavy load as users desperately to to salvage what they one had.
The good news? Opportunity. There are several startups looking to fill the void that Google has opened. The one that had bubbled to the top is: HiveMinded
More Good news…for those with iPhones – I think I found a replacement!
I think I just found a RSS reader that can handle my 8,400 RSS feeds! No other iOS app has been able to handle the digital hoarding of 8,400+ RSS feeds I have created.
There are sharing options, folders, read/unread indicators…There is even a “night mode” – which enables you to read before bed and not be blinded. I also like the “email full content”, Facebook, Evernote, “Copy” options and Instapaper options as well. Still testing it but so far it looks far better than the mess that Google Created with their Desktop and iOS Google Reader updates!
http://twitter.com/#!/feeddler
http://itune
A screenshot from Feeddler is shown below.
What do you think about all of this? What is your plan to continue to read/share and love the world of information available about your passions?
Feeddler - Google Reader Replacement for iOS
