I’ve been a user of Bloglines for what seems like a long time now, though it’s probably only been a little over a year. I thought highly enough of the service, in fact, that when I wrote up my HowTo on reading blogs, I used Bloglines as the example reader. But as of today, I’m done with Bloglines. Maybe I’ll come back, but probably not any time soon. Why? Innovation, or more accurately a distinct lack of it.
In a Boston Globe article from earlier this week, KarmaOne’s Auren Hoffman said the following: “Anytime companies get big, they innovate less.” While this sort of generalization is the type I typically try and avoid, I think there’s a lot of truth in that statement – particularly in the case of Bloglines. Now while it’s true that Bloglines per se isn’t a big company, it was bought by Ask Jeeves which in turn was bought by IAC/InterActiveCorp. With all of the resources that a larger company can provide, what’s new about Bloglines these days? Nothing, near as I can tell. It’s a fine reader, don’t get me wrong, but it is essentially the same reader it was when I started using it over a year ago. And in the Adam Bosworth described world of web applications that thrive on an iterate, iterate, iterate development model, that’s not encouraging. Russell Beattie expressed some similar concerns here. I might not need a new feature a day – and that would undoubtedly be disruptive from a UI perspective – but some improvement or evolution over the course of a year or more would seem to be a reasonable expectation. As Richard McManus reports, the focus from Bloglines seems to be primarily on the back end these days. Fair enough, but that’s not making my life better – it’s just maintaining the status quo. So Bloglines, thanks for all your help to date, but I think it’s time we see other people.
Having made the decision to move on from Bloglines, the question then becomes what’s going to take its place? Given the amount of time I spend in my aggregator these days, it’s not a trivial decision. My main requirement is that it be network based: I have little interest in a client side aggregator, because I need to be able to get at my feeds in varying locations.
In that context, one interesting option might be the just announced Google Reader. This is the day that purveyors of aggregating technologies have long feared: the entrance of the 800 lb gorilla of the web application space, Google. From my initial experience, however, it seems as if the folks from Google might have a little more work to do. Scoble’s impressions were favorable, but I’m a bit less impressed. It took a while for it to import my 490 or so feeds – a good half hour at least – and the interface seems to want to break down my preference towards browsing by feed to a river-of-news/relevance style interface. Maybe it’ll be like Gmail, where after a brief period of adjustment I come to appreciate it, but for now at least it’s not for me.
What about NewsGator Online? Scoble’s been a champion of these guys for a while, and and having had the opportunity to meet their team – they’re about 20 blocks away from me – I can tell you that they’re smart folks with a good vision of the aggregation opportunity. But NewsGator Online to me is not truly innovative; it’s not the Gmail to Bloglines’ Hotmail, in other words. It’s merely solid. Ditto for Rojo, though I haven’t used that in a few months at least.
So instead I’m turning to the currently closed alpha brainchild of a couple of Friends of RedMonk, FeedLounge. FeedLounge, which has been previously discussed in this space, is the product of Alex King/Scott Sanders efforts, and is IMO a great look at what a next generation reader can and should be. While I’ve seen some commentary on how readers should leverage Attention based data or better leverage cross-blog conversations, I’m a shortest-distance-to-declare-victory kind of guy. Give me the same old browsing experience, but made dramatically better via an injection of Ajax, and I’ll be a happy camper. I don’t want to wait for the once and future reader, and with FeedLounge I don’t have to. The single most compelling feature for me about FeedLounge is the fact that I can navigate the entire UI via the keyboard; indeed, for just browsing new posts I don’t need to do anything than keep hitting the space bar. It’s amazing how the little things, like Ajax-based keyboard navigation, can make such a big difference. FL isn’t perfect, and has some “early release” warts, but it’s still the best choice for me.
Anyway, I’ll do a more complete breakdown on my likes/dislikes with respect to FeedLounge, but for now I just want to say good bye Bloglines and hello FeedLounge.
