My apologies to any of you who follow me on Twitter, but the news about Google Reader going away hit me pretty hard. Yes, I realize that Google is a business, not a charity, but this one hurts. I chose Google Reader after my previous reader (Bloglines) also gave up the ghost and have cultivated my feeds pretty carefully (see my extended blogroll for the lion’s share).
Me, I have more than 600 feeds in my Google Reader feed. But way more important to me are the nearly 300 or so of you who have Weight Maven in your Google Reader feed!
The good news is that there are options for migrating to another service. My suggestion though? Don’t rush to switch to another reader just yet. I’m going to wait a bit and see how the dust settles. I’m not optimistic that Google will give Reader away (apparently much of it is too close to their valuable search intellectual property), but you never know (and major props to Yahoo for saving Delicious this way!)
I also think it makes sense to see who comes out of the woodwork. The news that Digg is getting into the reader space is particularly encouraging to me. I’ll make another post on this subject closer to Google’s July 1 “drop dead” date for those of you who may be in the same boat.
And word to the wise: start thinking about backup plans for any service you use religiously. I am kicking myself that I did not export my feeds from Google Reader more frequently. When I went to do so last night, the nice export I was used to using was gone, replaced by Google Takeout (stupid name) that had data in it for me that was several months out of date.
As I said on Twitter, “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice …”
Weight Maven is written by Beth Mazur. Beth believes that obesity is more symptom than cause and that the real problem is our Western diet -- especially sugar, refined grains, and industrial oils. Beth writes about nutrition, ancestral health, & food policy. And cats! 
I was angry at the news, too. Just a quick suggestion: feedly.com imports all of your subs as is in seconds. They have a transition plan in place post July when the Reader API shuts down. And it’s free…
Thanks much for the comment! Feedly is on my list, as is NewsBlur. But so far, some posts I’ve seen say neither are what Reader folks are used to. I also want to have some sense of confidence that the vendor can deal with the influx of traffic (although fat lot of good that did me going with Google after Bloglines croaked!).
And as far as free vs pay, I use a news reader so religiously (it’s a tab always open in my browser), I’d be *happy* to pay. Especially if I thought that would keep it around for a while!
Yes, Beth. I read this on Feedly, which I started sampling yesterday as a result of the news.
I didn’t have many subscriptions left, since they initially announced their plans to end Reader quite a while ago. (Plus, I like Bloglines and Netvibes a lot more, so it wasn’t a big deal for me.) I had already moved my favorite ones to Bloglines and Netvibes. I moved the remaining 39 subscriptions over to Netvibes yesterday.
What’s this about Bloglines? It works fine for me.
I had used Bloglines a few years back. I migrated to Google Reader when they announced plans to close the service. Someone acquired it right before it actually shut down, but I had already switched so didn’t go back. I hadn’t seen it mentioned in any of the articles I saw re alternatives, so hadn’t even realized it was still alive. For now, I’m sticking with my plan to see how the dust settles. Digg still seems the most promising to me, but maybe I’ll give Bloglines a look-see again.
Is the whole world more tech-savvie than me? I’m still trying to work out how facebook works :(
Yeah, it is pretty hard to keep up, isn’t it?!
I’m in the same boat as you, Beth…. I went over to google after bloglines announced the shut down, and just learned via the comments here they ate still around.