RSS Readers, My New Found Love

By Alina Popescu on March 11th, 2008 in Blogging Tips

As some of you already know, I decided to switch from blogrolls and bookmarks to a RSS reader to help me keep track of the blogs I read. The transition took a while, I have about 150 feeds in my Bloglines account, but I am overall happy with my choice. I even burned my own feed to make it easier for my readers to subscribe.

I also thought it was time I shared the pros and cons I discovered with you. These lists are however open and I’d like those of you dealing with feeds to add your own findings.

What I love

  • I instantly see what blogs are updated
  • Adding a new feed does not take longer than adding a bookmark
  • If I don’t have time, I can still read everything I missed a little later without running the risk of forgetting who updated what.
  • If I need certain posts for further reference, I can keep them new. This works better than bookmarks as I get to revisit them almost daily.
  • I get special subscription ebooks :P

On the downside

  • If Bloglines is down, I end up not reading important posts
  • There are still quite a few blogs publishing small pieces of articles so the whole reason for using a reader is lost
  • I tend to comment less

What thoughts and feelings has your RSS reader experience brought? Thanks for sharing!

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This post has 5 comments

  • bart treuren
    March 11th, 2008

    i think this is a pretty good overview of the pros and cons of a rss reader… i’ve started using bloglines a while ago but still need to implement it fully… it is indeed useful to see who’s been updating and who’s not been around for a while…

    there’s still a lot of functions i need to discover, i’ve hardly taken the time to explore everything… i also need to compare this programme with google reader which i understand a lot of people are using nowadays…

    keep well…

  • Alina Popescu
    March 11th, 2008

    Hi Bart, thanks for the feedback! Please let me know what you think of google reader. Given how many feeds I am already subscribed to, I would need some killer pros to decide to change habits :)

  • Varun Mathur
    March 11th, 2008

    Some killer pros to switch to Alertle (another rss feed reader):
    - very simple interface and moves very fast. regarded as very easy to use.
    - feeds represented by big desktop-like icons, easy to find.
    - “autoplay” feature lets you navigate thru the items without any clicking or key pressing.
    - keyboard shortcuts are very intuitive (up/down arrows)

    Check it out at: http://www.alertle.com
    (ps: you can switch from Bloglines to Alertle within a few mts using OPML. let me know if you need any help with that.)

    Varun (I’m one of the geeks behind Alertle)

  • Alina Popescu
    March 12th, 2008

    Hi Varun, thank you for the information and for the offer to help :) I checked Alertle and it looks like an interesting solution.

  • Penny Brand Protection
    November 5th, 2009

    Hi there Alina
    I have yet to use the RSS feeder, but with your pro and cons has helped me understand the workings and I think that maybe this will be beneficial to me in the future as it will be able to help me see whats what and not loosing out on something that could be very beneficial.

    Thanks for a great post:)

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