Google Reader is officially gone as of July 1st and that has been said to be the date that Google Friend Connect will also stop functioning. Google seems to be wanting us to use Google+ in place of these two platforms but if you’re like me, you still want a blog reader alternative. Here are 3 alternatives to Google Reader and Google Friend Connect.
- You simply sign up for it and it will even import the blogs you currently have subscriptions for on Google Reader right into your Bloglovin’ account. You can click here to import your subscriptions from Google Reader. You’ll see a blue button that says “Import from Google Reader” – click that and it will start moving them over. I had over 700 blog subscriptions on mine and it took under a minute and a half to get mine imported.
- You can also search for blogs on Bloglovin’ to find some new ones to follow!
- I do have to go through and categorize them now on Bloglovin’ but that’s a simple process and well worth it. Speaking of which, the ability to organize and categorize my subscriptions along with the clean, simple look of Bloglovin’ are two things I love about it.
- I also appreciate how quick it is to go through my feeds on Bloglovin’ – you get a pic, a title, and a bit of the post text – just enough to decide whether to go ahead and read that post. This allows you to zip past the ones that don’t interest you quite quickly…although I hope you won’t be zipping right past mine!
- Finally, being able to set it up so that it will email me when there’s new content in my feed (you can set up the frequency) is perfect for a busy person like me who often forgets to eat and go to the bathroom. :
- PS- of course I’d LOVE to have you follow my blog over there!
- Another option is Feedly. One of the advantages of it is that it has Chrome and Firefox extensions as well as apps for IOS and Android. This is really convenient and means that you can hop into Feedly quite quickly and easily.
- Feedly gives you many options for customizing your preferences including your view (titles only – much like Google Reader did, magazine style – similar to Bloglovin’, card style, and full articles). You have the option to allow Feedly to curate and feature articles based on their popularity and it provides some interface options with social media platforms such as Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook. These options include setting up a predetermined message to add to articles you tweet from Feedly and allowing you greater ease in pinning images from your feed to your Pinterest boards among other things.
- Feedly is also quite fast to scroll through when set up in magazine style as, similarly to Bloglovin’, you get only a photo, a title, and a brief snippet of text from the post in your feed.
- It was also very quick and easy to import my Google Reader subscriptions into Feedly.
- You can check out Feedly for yourself by clicking here.
- Appropriately named, The Old Reader is one created by people who really liked Google Reader and wanted something very similar. It has a familiar feel to it, although it seems a little sleeker and more modern. If you really loved the overall appearance and functionality of Google Reader, this might be the one for you.
- Personally, I found bringing my blog subscriptions from Google Reader over to the Old Reader kind of tricky. It’s not a simple import – you have to download your subscriptions yourself.
- It’s a little more basic in terms of bells and whistles than the other two but that may be just what you’re looking for!
- I really like one feature it has – it will separate out the feeds that no longer have any activity on them so that you can get rid of them and clean up your view. Now that’s handy!
- Check out The Old Reader here.
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