For those of you that didn’t see the news, Google Reader is going away as of July 1, 2013. While many lament it’s passing, specifically this St. Louis SEO agency, it seems to be the general trend with Google lately to prune, if not entirely kill off, it’s array of Google services. While I could spend a lot of screen time crying about change for the sake of change, I won’t. Others already have, and they say it a lot more eloquently than I ever could.
Instead let’s look at answers! Below are five ways you can consume your media without Google Reader.
1. Twitter:
Let’s face it, most of the people that you like to read often get buried in the semi-controlled firehose environment of Google Reader. Find these people on Twitter and follow them. Put them all in a nice little group called “Thought Leaders”, “Used to Follow on Google Reader” or whatever. If you miss the ease in Google reader of being able to search for specific topics, you can easily search within Twitter the same way. Heck, you might even find people to follow that you enjoy more.
2. Flipboard
Ok, I’m very biased on this one. It’s what I use on a day-to-day basis, and it’s works well with Evernote. If you’re not using Evernot, you should check it out, but that’s another blog post entirely.
Flipboard puts all the blogs you follow in a nice magazine-type format. It works on almost any platform, and it makes discovery simple, easy, and fun. I can’t give it a higher endorsement.
3. Feedly
While the good people on Reddit say that the mass exodus from Google Reader is crashing Feedly‘s servers, I haven’t seen any problems this morning at all.
Feedly is very similar to Flipboard. It converts all your favorite blogs into a pretty, visual format that everyone is so fond of these days. Thank you Pinterest! Many people prefer Feedly for it’s ease of navigation and better social media integration. This writer doesn’t see a problem, but you only have to look to Quora to see some that do.
4. Netvibes
If you just can’t stand to see the sun rise another day without your beloved Google Reader, you should check out Netvibes. Functionally, it’s very similar. If you’re using it for professional reasons, there are some nice analytics features to Netvibes that are found elsewhere.
So, the world isn’t ending. It’s just changing and that’s ok. Change is the only constant, right? So, get off the bandwagon and get on another one. Your content is waiting for consumption.
