Google Reader Alternatives

In a rather surprising move, Google has decided to shut-down Reader on July 1, 2013. Users can export their data, including their feed subscriptions.

Since 2005, Google Reader has had a loyal following, being a great product for subscribing to RSS feeds from websites. But over the past few years, there have been many modern applications available for information subscription. Here are some noteworthy alternatives to Google Reader:

• NewsBlur (or try dev.newsblur.com) is a personal news reader, free on the web, iPad, iPhone, and Android. It’s open source, which is great.
• The Old Reader is a social RSS reader. You can even import your feeds directly from your Google Reader account.
• Fever is a unique RSS reader. It reads your feeds and picks out the most frequently talked about links from a customizable time period. It’s a self-hosted application (built with PHP and MySQL), that you can run on your own server.
• Feedly is another way to organize, read and share the content of your favorite sites. You can sync with Google Reader. Feedly is available for Chrome, iPhone/iPad, Android, Kindle.
• Tiny Tiny RSS is an open source Web-based news feed (RSS/Atom) reader and aggregator, designed to allow you to read news from any location, while feeling as close to a real desktop application as possible.
• Reeder is another popular RSS reader for iPhone, iPad and Mac.
• Pulse is a fast and beautiful way to read your favorite blogs, magazines, social networks and newspapers. It’s available on Web, iOS and Android.
• RSSOwl is a free and powerful news feed reader for the desktop. It’s available for Windows, Linux and Mac.

The official reason for the Google Reader closure has been attributed to declining usage, but we think the reality of the situation can be better summed-up in a comment left on an online forum by an upset user:

That’s because there was almost ZERO innovation done on this product. Very few (mostly visual) improvements, and very few new features. The latest posts on Google Reader blog are from 2011.

With new content being published ever-increasingly, readers’ demand exploding and mobile+tablet usage sky-rocketing, the landscape of information subscription is changing. User behaviour is more social-driven now than ever, and presentation is moving to a low-noise, personalized, real-time “river style“. There’s plenty of room for innovation and growth in the information subscription space, and Feedity is committed to it.

Update: Here’s a response from Brian Shih, former Google Reader Product Manager:

Personally, I think that there is still a lot of value a service like Reader could provide — particularly in a world with increasing information overload coming us from many different sources. But Reader at Google was pigeonholed as an RSS-reader explicitly, and didn’t have a chance to grow beyond that to explore that space.

We Oppose SOPA and PIPA

Prominent websites like Wikipedia, Google, Flickr, Wired, WordPress and many others, went on a blackout today in protest against a US Senate legislation that would certainly kill them forever. It would kill Feedity forever. It would kill a million other useful websites and Web applications forever. It would kill the entire notion of ‘Freedom of Speed and Expression’, forever.

As BoingBoing has put it aptly:

The legislation is called the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), and would put us in legal jeopardy if we linked to a site anywhere online that had any links to copyright infringement.

This would unmake the Web, just as proposed in the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). We don’t want that world. If you don’t want it either, visit AmericanCensorship.org for instructions on contacting your Senator. You might also join us with Craigslist and Reddit and sign this petition. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has more information on this and other issues central to your freedom online.

Feedity was founded on the belief that RSS/XML can immensely enhance data extraction over the Web, as a massive database. Here at Feedity, we deal with external content all the time and we believe in the reuse of public content for a more informative and knowledgeable online community.

We oppose SOAP and PIPA. Support us and help spread the word.

FeedBurner Alternative and Uptime Report

MakeUseOf, a popular technology blog, recently reviewed Feedity as an alternative to Google’s FeedBurner service. FeedBurner has been stagnant for the past few years and it has received some criticism regarding durability.

Feedity can help you manage your RSS feeds better. While FeedBurner only allows management of existing feeds, Feedity allows users to create new feeds for virtually any webpage and manage it painlessly. Feedity provides custom RSS feeds and management tools to bloggers, podcasters, and other web-based content publishers. If you are looking for a simpler alternative that does the basic feed syndication and management things well, then Feedity is the best starting point.

Besides, we’ve maintained an uptime of 99.996% this quarter (Q2 2010) with only 3 minutes and 2 seconds of downtime in the past 3 months. This is great for our paying customers. If you find Feedity useful, then do consider upgrading. It’s hassle-free, inexpensive, and Feedity will offer immense value to you for Social Media Monitoring and feed publishing.