Sunday, 19 May 2013

Bloglovin or Feedly

With the demise of Google Reader at the end of next month, I started to look for a different reader in which to view blog posts.

The reader found in the Dashboard of Blogger only shows posts from the newest post -- this is not helpful to me so I looked elsewhere.

It seems that most Google Reader users have chosen to go with Bloglovin or Feedly. 

Bloglovin asks new users to "claim" their blog, Feedly does not.

Both Bloglovin and Feedly are free to access.

Both Bloglovin and Feedly ask for permission to access the user's Google Reader in order to copy their reading list -- too easy, especially when I have a list of over 150 blogs (which means about thirty new posts a day).

Both Bloglovin and Feedly have apps for use on iPads and can also be read in a browser on a standard computer, whether desktop or laptop.

Both Bloglovin and Feedly present new posts with a picture from the post and the first fifty or so words of the post.

Both Bloglovin and Feedly offer the option of reading the post on the reader or going to the original post in the browser of choice.

Both Bloglovin and Feedly present the information in one of two formats: by blog, or by date.

By default, both Bloglovin and Feedly present the newest post first if the user chooses to read by date.

Both Bloglovin and Feedly allow posts to be marked as read so the user only sees a list of unread posts -- well, in Bloglovin one can still see the read posts but they are faded and obviously marked as read.

And in my experience, that is all the choices that Bloglovin offers.

But Feedly has so many more options. They recognise that they have gained a large number of Google Reader users and therefore have redesigned their software (or so I understand) so that features are similar to GR.

The most important of these, for me, is the ability to read from the oldest post first. If I fall behind, as I did over the Mothers' Day weekend when I was away for three days, I want to read the older posts before the newer ones, particularly on the blogs that have new posts every day.

And so, for me, Feedly has become my Reader of choice.

Are you a Google Reader user? Which reader will you move to and why?

8 comments:

  1. I moved to The Old Reader (www.theoldreader.com) because it was the easiest for me to learn quickly. It does all the things you mentioned. I've used it for over a month now, and am very happy with it. I didn't like Bloglovin when I looked at it. I can't remember what bothered me about Feedly, but something made me choose the other instead.

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  2. I looked at feedly and found it terribly confusing. On my iPad there are sliding pages and I couldn't see the folders I made and there are lots of uninteresting blogs suggested on the side. Three times I looked at it it and each time it made no sense to me. With bloglovin I signed up by claiming my blog so I have access to statistics about my blog. The blogs I follow and the folders I have made are visible on one home page. I included a profile story ( which many people neglect to do and I find that annoying). I get the once a day email of blog updates and scroll through to find some to comment on. I have a couple of folders to divide them up into manageable groups so I don't have to look at every blog I follow if I don't want to. I am very happy with bloglovin.

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  3. I am dreading the change......thanks for the input. I hope to check it out before I run out of time!

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  4. I love Feedly! Bloglovin's requirement of "claiming" my blog just annoyed me, so I didn't pursue it any farther. I like that my many groups/categories are easily identified by color and name, and I can set each group's default viewing style differently. For example, I have one group that I don't need to see photos - the blog titles are all that matter (it's a list of books free or on sale for the Kindle). My color palette and recipe groups display enormous photos with just the title of the post, and my quilting groups show a large photo, the title, and a few lines of the post. I can also drag my categories around to reorder them - so my must reads are at the top, followed by the rest in order of interest. When I check off a category as read, it scrolls on to the next category.

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  5. I tried Feedly but didn't much like it. I am going to try The Old Reader, but I can't import blogs using the iPad, so need to fire up the old laptop. But I might give Feedly a second look, thanks for the comparison.

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  6. I am loving Feedly more than Reader actually! So no problems here. I claimed my blog for Bloglovin too but just find Feedly's interface to work better for me. I do a lot of my blog reading on my iPad and I like the the feature to save for later. I mark blog entries I want to comment on or things I want to pin and then I can work through the saved entries next time I'm at my PC. It seems like they are adding lots of new features so it will only get better.

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  7. I'm still trying to settle on a replacement, I've not looked at Feedly. Thanks for the review.

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  8. I love Feedly, I've been using it for quite some time now after I heard about it on a podcast an age ago. Love it.

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