The Wake
A Wake for Google Reader
alt. title: In the wake of Google Reader
I’m still working on the next huge draft — a post on bookselling, oddly enough (yeah, yeah, I know) — but given that today is July 2nd and we are all waking to a Google-Reader-Free world, I thought I’d take a moment to celebrate that, or commiserate, or whatever.
So. Now what.
Simple, for most: http://www.purplegene.com/reader
…ok, so I’m pulling your leg. Yes, most of us are on Feedly and the transition is relatively painless. (Though go check out Purple Gene – it’s rough and tumble, but it might rub you in the right ways.)
For me, the past few months have been an opportunity to examine and re-examine my whole data diet: what I read, how I read it, why I read certain things, and why some people/sites/corporations insist on making it way more difficult than it should be. After all of that, and after months of navel gazing (here, read a ‘progress’ post from three months ago) I actually ended up unfollowing about 100 people on twitter, removed about a third of my RSS feeds, pushed another third into a new folder named “skippable” (guess why) and then conscientiously built a new data diet, adding a bunch of new feeds and sources until I’m back up to ~150 RSS Feeds in my ‘daily’.
[see also, re: information diet – http://www.informationdiet.com/ and the Clay Johnson book, isbn 9781449304683]
Some take-away thoughts:
- There really is a 9-5, Monday-to-Friday internet: a lot of news sites and even many blogs post, yes, during the day and also mostly during the week. On the weekends my collective feeds drop from 500+ articles daily down to about 100. It works, especially as several sites I like to follow do link-roundups or “Sunday Long Reads” — but this was an interesting reveal.
- Following a tumblr via RSS is so much better than trying to keep up with everything from the dash. The real gems of tumblr I follow via reader – a lot of the rest is still great, for what it is [tumblr] but I only read them (Ha! ‘reading’ tumblr; it’s an image browser) when I run out of RSS-fed articles.
- Prismatic, op. cit., is also an excellent 2nd source — a way to extend your reading day after you run to the end of your RSS feeds. – bonus: Prismatic occasionally turns up blogs you’d never find otherwise, which you can then subscribe to via RSS
- The “Death of Google Reader” is a like, top-5-all-time, Nerd World Problem. We just wouldn’t shut up about it, but in the end: it is all fizzle no bang.
More:
http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2013/03/14/four-google-reader-alternatives-for-the-hard-core-user/
http://mashable.com/2013/06/19/feedly-google-reader/
http://blog.feedly.com/2013/06/19/feedly-cloud/
http://gizmodo.com/its-now-super-easy-to-jump-from-google-reader-to-the-b-514258503
http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/22/rss-readersplosion-shows-a-lot-of-skating-to-where-the-puck-has-been/
http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/24/there-is-no-google-reader-replacement-only-alternatives/
http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/24/4460502/just-over-a-week-until-rss-apocalypse-where-are-you-moving
http://gigaom.com/2013/06/24/why-does-everyone-except-google-want-to-build-a-reader/
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/06/where-to-take-your-google-reader-subscriptions-and-how/
http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/29/you-cant-quit-google-reader-because-i-already-fired-you/
http://daltoncaldwell.com/where-will-google-reader-traffic-go
http://makezine.com/2013/07/01/survey-says-google-reader-users-headed-to-feedly/
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/06/30/195875609/q-a-on-the-death-of-google-reader-and-the-future-of-reading
http://readwrite.com/2013/07/01/how-to-make-news-readers-work-for-you
http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/01/we-were-the-1000-goodbye-google-reader/
http://just-ask-kim.com/google-graveyard-infographic/
http://alternativeto.net/software/google-reader/
…and now I promise to shut up about this particular topic on twitter. Promise.
…Oh, after I tweet this post. And maybe 1 RT in the morning. ;)
