I don't get it. Most major media outlets have social media presence. Why do you need Reader?
1. Because the vast majority of bloggers aren't "major media outlets." They might — might — be followers of one social media tool, to which they manually post updates (except for Twitter, who allows you to do so automagically). But some guy who draws a cartoon, or a gal who comments on gaming, or a pseudonymous genderless curmudgeon who discusses the intersection between liberal politics, particle physics, and the Food Network … they just post on their blog, and there it sits, unless you either (a) go to that page daily to check or (b) read about it in an RSS feed.
2. Major media outlets often have dozens or hundreds of articles a day. That simply is not practical to either post (or, if posted, follow) in a social media tool. Reader was awesome for presenting me with 30 headlines, scrollable for more. And reading the content was a quick-responding click away. That allows for amazing speed in skimming through material to find what you want to drill down to. I like Google+ a lot, but scrolling through an activity stream, in whatever tool, is not very efficient.
What Google is effectively saying in this is that if you want to have any sort of visible presence on the Internet, then you need to cross-post everything you do to Plus, Facebook, and Twitter. And that's just not nice, fair, or an efficient use of time, or the Internet.
(h/t +Doyce Testerman)
Google kills Reader, shoots bloggers in the knee
Before I was at Massively, before Bio Break, heck, before WAAAGH!, I was already using Google Reader regularly and faithfully. When I first started reading MMO blogs, I would have to load each pag……
I'm already on Findly, and I'm suddenly caring a LOT less about greader going down.
I'm playing with Findly and The Old Reader right now. Findly is suffering from the crush of Reader folks moving over so while it's very pretty, it's not working too well for me at the moment. I'm also not a fan of the fact that if i want full articles listed I have tell Findly to do that on EACH AND EVERY FEED. I've yet to find a setting that makes that a default.
I've not done much with The Old Reader yet because the import function is overwhelmed from all the Reader folks moving over, but it claims to be a clone of the Old Google Reader before Google made all those changes last year that no one was happy with. You can even follow people you know on it just like, well, the old Reader. I'm hoping the import works today so I can play with it more.
Feedly has a good porting service and several layout options.
I get where you are coming from Dave. To Play Devil's advocate, maybe it's time for bloging software to better support hooks to social media. This announcement would certainly help drive this.
The problem is not on the blogging side, +Jon Weber . Google Plus does not have a posting API. Facebook does not have a posting API. Twitter does, but that ends up being more of a notification thing.
Another observations I've made elsewhere (and failed to record here): GReader is asyncronous, to a large degree. If I don't hit Plus or Twitter or FB today, my "stream" will keep rolling and I may miss something I wanted to see. RSS entries could sit in GReader forever. Weekly review of blog posts from X or cartoons from Y or opinion pieces from Z? No problem in Reader.
Looking at this link after a quick search, there are plugins to solve this. Also I did read that FB and Twitter both have APIs.
http://www.wpsquare.com/auto-post-google-plus-wordpress-blog/
In any case it is a difference of style more than anything else. If I miss something I want to keep moving forward. Otherwise my reader feed would just keep getting backed up. Heck sometimes I was happy to miss a few days and just clean things out.
Thanks, +Jon Weber — I'll take a look at that. (Ironically, my current technical problem is going the other direction — the tool I use to autopost to my WP blog from G+ is not working.)
I've looked at the WPGPlus plugin before and I forget why I didn't use it, but there was a reason. As far as I know G+'s API still doesn't allow for third party posting to your stream so how this accomplishes it is of some concern.
Yea I agree that this whole thing is a dumb move when their G+ API is read only. I have no idea what they were thinking there.
+Les Jenkins — in Feedly, go to "All", then click on the Gears icon in the top-right, and change Views to "Full Articles" — should do what it looks like you want.
+Doyce Testerman Nope, that does it for the All list, but each individual feed still has to be modified by hand. I've always jumped from individual feed to individual feed in Reader as opposed to clicking on the "category" and having stuff from multiple sites all mixed together. At least Feedly does seem to remember that I set an individual feed to show Full Articles, but I can't go into a settings and tell it to make that the default view for all feeds at one time.
It's annoying, but a problem that eventually fades as I make my way through the feeds.
I will move into another feed reader in a few weeks (we do have until July, after all), once some of the dust has settled and the suitable "Here's the best to move onto (that isn't crashing due to the increased traffic)" posts make their way through.
(Is it just me, or is the 'reply' threading via gmail for google+ gone
stupid today?)
Feedly's been entirely stable for me, and plenty fast: I just wish I could
find the theme selection screen I saw last night and haven't, since, been
able to locate.
+Dave Hill , +Les Jenkins , and +George Wiman are my new GReader. I found most of my feeds were posted by them anyway. And if I miss something, oh well. I like having people tell me about things I haven't read yet in conversation.
I've found I need to focus my attention on items I'm trying to learn with the free time.
To be sure, one of the reasons I've used GReader a lot less is that I have more than enough info flowing my way via G+ and Twitter. That said, there are some sites that are just not there, and I very much want to keep track of them.
As far as I know G+'s API still doesn't allow for third party posting to your stream so how this accomplishes it is of some concern.
It does so by emulating the G+ internal posting mechanisms. It probably needs to store your google account username and password.
+les jenkins – Under "preferences" – default view.
And yes, they totally broke the nice way you could reply to posts inside
Gmail. It's ugly now.
Well shit. I'm so used to everyone putting those settings behind little gear symbols or three vertical bars that it never occurred to me to look for a PREFERENCES text.
I know, right?
There's more than a few things about Feedly that are… not what I'd
expect. I want my unread counts a lot more visible, for one thing.
On the other hand, it's actually got some nice features that greader
didn't, and uses that API (for now) so…
Well, since all the cool kids are doing it, I'm giving it a try.
A bit more "graphics! white space! magazine-looking!" than the taut compactness of GReader, but it looks livable.
Yeah, the magazine view is a default, but once I switched the preferences
around, it was pretty decent. Got rid of the stock tickers and such.
I REALLY like that, once it's done it's handshake, recent tweets from my
followed people show up in the sidebar. I don't look at twitter very much
right now, and this helps me keep a toe in.
Interesting. Yeah, I guess I hsould look at those ol' preferences (which is odd, since that's usually the first thing I do).
Now if I can just figure out how to get Feedly to list my subscriptions alphabetically instead of by whatever random method they appear to be using (most recently updated perhaps?) then I'd be happy with it.
You guys just need a whipper snapper to help you through those settings. 😉