Feedly is doing tremendous amount of work to become the monopoly that Google reader was. At the moment, it is good for us and the web. They are developing their own back end to replace Google reader. Earlier Feedly was using google reader api’s on the back end to deliver refreshingly new magazine like feel for your feeds. Now that Google reader is coming to its end, Feedly very quickly grabbed on the opportunity to become the platform that Google reader was by building their own back end which they call Normandy. Feedly has seen success with users increasing by many folds over the past few weeks since the retiring of Google reader has been made. How they scale will be only known when Google reader is turned off in July end, but its no doubt that so far they have been making the right moves towards become the leader that Google Reader was.
From Feedly’s blog
We have been working behind the curtains with the developers of Reeder,Press, Nextgen Reader, Newsify and gReader as design partners for our Normandy project1. Today we are excited to announce that you will be able to access your feedly from all these apps before Google Reader retires and that the access to feedly API will be free.
Yay! My favorite app Reeder will still be usable when I move over to Feedly in July end. If you are looking for an alternative to Google reader, do give Feedly a try. You can find my reviews about feedly here and here
Reeder is still my most used app on the iphone and I am delighted to see the new update from Silvio on friday. The iphone app got updated to version 3.1. The new update is really significant for users who were primarily using reeder to sync with google reader. We all know Google Reader is shutting down in July. Infact I made sure my reader is backed up with feedly just in case I am left with nothing to sync after july. I was always curious to see what silvio would do with reeder, given not many users would be keen on hosting their own feed sync server and it would be really dumb to just give up the app development because google stopped syncing.
This Reeder app update features an alternate sync support from Feedbin. Since feedbin is a $2 per month paid sync support, Reeder will also work as a standalone/local feed aggregator. So you can choose for paying to sync or you can continue to use Reeder as a stand alone app with no sync across device after Reader gets shutdown in July.
Though this update is not the perfect solution for the lack of free syncing of feeds, I must say this is definitely a step forward at least something is better than nothing. I purchased Fever and have fever server ready that I can use when google reader is no more,but not everybody is inclined to pay for Syncing. With 3 more months in hand, I still expect Silvio to look for a free sync service that can sync with Reeder or atleast come up with using icloud and make sure Reeder syncs across iPhone, iPad and Mac.
The word is out and there is no point brooding over it. Yes you heard it, Google will unplug the google reader service from July. Lets sulk it in and try to move on. After all how often have free services lived for eternity. What are we left with now? Just an OPML file I guess. 🙂
The options are not many, either we switch to an alternate RSS platform or to a desktop client. I am not quite sure if any of us really would want to switch to a desktop client after using google reader for years. The main feature of google reader is that you can access it from any where and any type of device. If you just want to use the opml (exported from Google reader) file with an aggregator the wiki page has a huge list of aggregators with a detailed comparison here, you can choose one that suits you. Almost every client mentioned in that list is a desktop client and hence you most likely will lose syncing.
What am I going to do?
I am going with Feedly. Well you ask, Feedly is a browser extension or an app that runs with Google reader in the backend for sync. Exactly, but not anymore. Their blog now reads that they were expecting the demise of Google reader and they have created their own backend. So when google reader is powered down, feedly’s backend servers will kickin and keep you in sync. Besides I was already their user till I switched to Reeder on my iphone. I like Feedly as well, you can read my review of feedly here. Just that I liked Reeder more on the iphone.Now that google reader will be killed I am curious to find out what direction Reeder will take, given Silvio says
To me its better to stay with the company I know, have used and trusted rather than try something totally new unless its Feedafever. So just start using Feedly and you wont even know if Google unplugged Reader, Feedly will take care of everything for you (hopefully with out a glitch) when reader is gone. If you aren’t convinced about Feedly yet, you can try other options mentioned here.
