Bloglines is shutting down. End of an era.

http://blog.ask.com/

by donohoe • 16 years ago

31 15 16 years ago

blog.ask.com

bmelton2• 16 years ago

Dare I say it? Good.

Bloglines has been a crappy product and user experience for years, and I honestly don't think that Google Reader is that much better (anymore -- used to be awesome).

I much disagree with the assertion that RSS is dead, or even that RSS aggregators are dead/dying; I just think that Bloglines (and others) have really crappy implementations of what a news reader ought to do. Frankly, I always though that treating RSS feeds as email was the wrong way to go.

zackola• 16 years ago

What do you use?

hvs• 16 years ago

I'm not sure about the OP, but I use Fever:

http://feedafever.com/

You have to host it yourself, but after using it for five minutes it proved to me that it is was more than worth the $30.

auxbuss• 16 years ago

I use the NewsFox plug-in in Firefox.

bmelton2• 16 years ago

The answer shows my bias, I suppose, but I alternate between Plum (a feed aggregator that I am building) and Fever, which is great, but doesn't work even remotely how I want it to, and I hate that it's a self-hosted application that I pay for. It's worth the money, to be sure, I just really don't like the model as it applies to me.

blasdel2• 16 years ago

Especially compared to their competitors Bloglines and the last couple years of Google Reader aren't very much like email at all — the only vestige is the unread count. One of the major points of difference is the 'river of news' UI, where disparate items are shown in a continuous stream. It's not really any faster to read than viewing them one at a time like email, but the psychological difference is huge.

What do you think used to be better about Google Reader? If anything it was much more like email before!

Koldark• 16 years ago

I still have my free "I <3 Bloglines" T-Shirt. Guess I can just use it as a grease rag now...

michael_dorfman• 16 years ago

I, for one, will be sorry to see it go. I thought their beta version (which has been in beta for years, natch) was quite nice.

Anyone have any ideas for replacements (other than Google Reader, which leaves me unimpressed?)

AndrewDucker• 16 years ago

I switched to Google Reader a couple of years back, and never regretted it.

I was a bit sad at the time, but they kept having uptime problems, and I wasn't willing to put up with it endlessly.

blasdel2• 16 years ago

I've been using RSS readers in some form for more than 10 years now, and used Bloglines intensively from 2003-2007. I ditched it when NetNewsWire went free with syncing and I realized I had Macs at both home and work. I ditched NNW for Google Reader 2 years ago when I switched back to Linux most of the time, since the web version was terrible.

I remember trying Google Reader periodically after it came out, and it was awful compared to Bloglines. It took them years to just duplicate the basic functionality. It's much better now on most fronts now after a couple more years of iteration, though their feed management stuff still sucks.

interesse• 16 years ago

The feed reader is my primary window into the web. I used to use Bloglines until they got unbearably unreliable some 2 years ago. I host my own Tiny Tiny RSS (http://tt-rss.org/redmine/) since then and can highly recommend it.

EvilTrout• 16 years ago

I was an avid Bloglines user back in the early 2000s. I remember loving the product so much that I emailed them asking how I could pay for it. I got a reply saying they were still figuring out how to make money.

I wonder now if they ever did get around to charging for the service.

dho• 16 years ago

No, they didn't charge for the service, they only showed ads on the start page.

robgough• 16 years ago

Like so many others I was an avid bloglines user for years. I didn't even like Google Reader during it's early years. The user experience on bloglines just seemed to get worse and worse, and eventually I had to switch.

Bloglines is shutting down. End of an era.

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