You may not be old enough to have experienced Google Reader, but the beloved RSS feed reader was the perfect solution for ingesting news without all the noise. Just a bare-bones list of headlines curated by you, the reader.
What could be more useful material than subjects and items that you specify? It made the morning ritual a truly blissful habit.
But, seemingly just when you had the perfect amount of sources carefully categorized, Google announced it was discontinuing the service due to a declining user base. Business is business, and although Google cited dwindling interest, the audience actively using the service displayed utmost devotion.
I distinctly remember the feeling of despair in the waning moments of Google Reader. A sense of abandonment. You think I’m sensationalizing this? All hope was lost.
Enter Feedly
A product developed out of sheer necessity. A service that would put its arms around the hundreds of thousands of fallen souls to resurrect this once proud faction of netizens.
Ok, clearly sensationalizing. But still … Feedly was in existence prior to the Google Reader shut-down, however the once small platform instantly gained 500,000 new users in 2013 as a result. Having long since established itself as a premiere news aggregator since those early days, how does Feedly stack up nowadays with so many alternatives?
The Social Media Angle
Feedly also taps social media to showcase links shared in your feeds. After setting up my Facebook and Twitter credentials, Feedly displayed friends' shared links in the right hand column. I found this a welcome addition as it let me see all links of interest in one convenient location.
Feedly's social media features aren't a one-way street; you can also craft messages to update your streams. This capability won't replace Hootsuite or Twitter.com, but it's a welcome addition for those times when you want to send a message in a hurry.
Setup and Navigation
The Feedly entrance page has a minimalist, lime-green design that has the logos of various publications aligned on the bottom of the interface. Logging in requires the use of a Google account, which means that if you don't currently have one you'll need to create one. This may turn away some potential Feedly users, but if you already used Google Reader you'll feel right at home.
Once you grant Feedly the right to access your Google account, it quickly loads your homepage. It consists of three sections: The main content section (which houses Featured Stories), a column to the left of it (which showcases sections for fresh stories, saved stories, and a tool for adding new sources), and a sidebar to the right of it (which displays your feeds and a few Amazon affiliate ads). The layout is basic and easy to navigate. Feedly has several themes and category views to further customize your experience.
PROS
- Clean, easy-to-navigate RSS reader.
- Leverages Facebook and Twitter to display links.
- Users can tag stories.
- Site discovery tool.
CONS
- Requires a Google account.
- No Internet Explorer bookmarklet.
