Anyone with a blog, or anyone that follows a blog, is likely to know about Google Reader.
For those that don’t though, Google Reader is an RSS feed. Simplified even further, it’s a news aggregator, meaning you can use it to follow blogs and other websites to get daily news delivered to your email inbox.
Sadly, Google Reader is set to be shelved as of July 1st 2013 because of a decline in use.
So, if you’re already panicking about what you’ll do when Google Reader is officially put to bed, here are some of the best replacement apps you can use instead:
- Within 24 hours of Google Readers’ announcement, Feedly gained a whopping
500,000 new users
- . Since then, it’s reported a jump of
- . So, if you want to follow the crowd, this is probably the app for you.
- You can use it to organise everything from blogs to YouTube channels, and it’s available on
- ,
- and
- .
- Flipboard advertises itself as your personal magazine. It allows you to collate and share excellent content while enjoying a beautiful interface that’s been inspired by the layout of print magazines everywhere.
- Your followed news sites, blogs and article groups are sectioned into categories, so you can browse at leisure. It’s a nice alternative to the usual layout for news aggregators, and it certainly takes the pressure off – you don’t feel pressured to get through everything, since there’s no inbox-style ‘22 new messages’ icon blinking at you.
- Get it on
Android
- and
iOS
- .
Google Currents
- This, I think, is what Google wants to plug following Google Reader’s demise. Google Currents is an app for smartphones and tablets that you can add blogs and news sites to for quick reading.
- It certainly has an impressive list of sites attached to it, such as The Guardian, Metro UK, New Scientist, Sky News, and more. The list is pretty much endless, actually.
- You can download it for
Android
- and
- .
Pulse
- One of my favourite things about Pulse is that it’s pretty. It works very well too, but the colourful mosaic it creates with your followed blogs and news sites is just too hard to resist. It currently has around 750 publishers signed up to the service, so there’s no shortage of news to read. Even better, Pulse has developed a tool that allows users to
import their Google Reader feeds
- .
- If you only want to follow blogs, this is the RSS feed for you. It works solely with blogs (hence its name) and allows you to collect all of your favourite ones together.
- The official site also allows you to browse through blogs that have signed up to the service, so you can go on a hunting spree if you’re after some fun new reads.
- While I don’t think it’ll compete well with other RSS feeds out there, it’s nice and simple and it certainly does what it says on the tin.
Do you know of any other RSS feeds that may stand a chance of replacing Google Reader?