By Joseph Manna
Feed reading is a big deal, especially for entrepreneurs. They’re strapped for time and they need to be able to get their news and information quickly and easily. Google Reader addressed this need for more than half a million active users since 2005; however, they recently announced they will sunset their feed-reading service on July 1.
While this has upset many passionate Google Readers users, there is some good that comes from this. Before Google Reader, there was plenty of development and advancement of applications that would display RSS feeds, but since Google graduated ‘Reader’ from their Labs and rapid adoption took place, innovation and creation of new services has slowed significantly among competing services.
This is great because it will promote innovation and growth among service providers to deliver news and information to users. Ultimately, users will get a chance to familiarize themselves with new ways to consume information from a variety of sources.
1. The Old Reader
The Old Reader stays focused on exactly what matters and delivers RSS feeds and updates into a clean and refined interface — something that former Google Reader users will appreciate. Despite the rapid growth (50,000 people are in line in front of me to import their old feeds), the service is stable and displays my feed content clearly.
The Old Reader is perfect for entrepreneurs who want RSS updates without any of the clutter.
2. NewsBlur
NewsBlur has been under development for quite some time, but only recently they’ve had an imminent need to scale. They have a very robust interface if you have multiple feeds that you want to roll up into folders. They offer interesting technical stats alongside your feeds so you can see how often sources publish their content and how often you consume it. Right now the site is being hammered by new users migrating on over, so give it a little time and you’ll be in love with this powerful new way to consume RSS feeds. Word from their Twitter account indicates that if you access dev.newsblur.com, it’s online. They offer a mobile application that goes wherever you go, too.
NewsBlur is great for entrepreneurs because it provides great organization of RSS feeds and lets you geek out on some of the stats if you so desire.
3. Feedly
Feedly has undergone a lot of development over the past year including a complete redesign and unique approach to content delivery. Instead of displaying all your feed-driven content, they apply a ranking to them based on social data and your prior consumption. The result is that you see only the content that’s trending and is relevant to you. They are doing their best to scale to the needs of more than 500,000 users, but as you can imagine they are struggling. They also have a slick mobile app that stays synced wherever you are, too.
Feedly is great for entrepreneurs so they can discover what new content is rising instead of hunting and pecking for the best stories later.
These three powerful alternatives to Google Reader are great solutions so you can stay on top of your favorite feeds, have a clean interface to read them and minimize the clutter. Consider what places you visit most often (besides Facebook) for news and information and add those sources to your feed reader service. By doing this, you can get the most value from your RSS reader because the content will be exactly what you like.
Just so you know, you can add the Big Ideas Blog into your feed reader by adding this URL (http://bigideasblog.infusionsoft.com/feed) so you can stay current on our marketing and sales tips for small businesses.
Photo Credit: Harshil.Shah
This post 3 Awesome Feed Readers that You’ll Love was first published on the Big Ideas Blog.