google reader Archives | wit wisdom and food

Witty aren’t I? I am just in that kind of mood and every time I think about Feedly I start singing the song from Little Shop of Horrors. Luckily, Feedly isn’t a little shop of horrors. I started out this plan of researching both readers and picking the best one thinking Feedly would be the winner. Then I got on bloglovin’ and I was so enamoured I didn’t think I would go back to Feedly. Then I remembered I am my father’s daughter and we research all options. Remember when betamax and VHS came out? Dad waited until some of the big studios backed VHS. Smart man, he never had to replace his out dated betamax tapes. So my reader research continues.

I am glad it has because Feedly is turning out to be a great option and a strong front runner. It took me a while to get used to the layout of Feedly. I am not a fan of feature posts at the top and then rest of the posts below that.

After a little poking around though I realized I could customize the layout and now it looks a little like a Pinterest page which I am enjoying. When I stop enjoying that I can change to another format. I still can’t believe I stuck with Google reader when this was out there.

I also realized I can change the theme, which is just a color theme but I am a big fan of customizable. Isn’t that a great shade of green? I think all the options to customize Feedly is really it’s best feature. That preference link in the sidebar is just full of options.

The main reasons I think I Feedly could keep me fed

Can you see in the left sidebar the words blogging and inspiration? Those are tags I can create to organize my saved posts. Now I can pretend to be organized online too!
I can not only follow blogs I can also follow news sources. I don’t follow any but the option is very nice
This seems to be the most popular choice of other readers so if I stick with this I shouldn’t need to worry down the road that it will be closing and I have to start this project all over again.

The things on the plate that just don’t fit my fancy

I am starting to get used to the app but honestly it isn’t my favorite. It works fairly well so maybe I just don’t like reading blogs on my phone.
I can’t find a help page or suggestions on how to do things. I am getting old and I don’t find technology intuitive so following on twitter isn’t my idea of a good way to provide help or suggestions.

The pros to Feedly are seriously outweighing the cons at this point. I think I will probably read most things via Feedly but I still love my bloglovin’ account. No need to decide a winner. Over time the stronger one will certainly reveal itself. I am sure both sites will be very active in updates and changes to improve their product for their new audience. I do know this though, even if Google Reader wasn’t shutting down on July 1st I would never go back after seeing these two sites!

Good luck on your search for a reader replacement. You can follow me on either and keep up with my witty post titles.

If you didn’t see my post on bloglovin’ you can find it here.

Last week there was, as bloglovin’ put it, a mass evacuation from google reader. The announcement that Google reader would be done on July 1st created quit a stir. I saw blog posts, twitter and facebook posts all mentioning the closing of google reader. I was one of the many that was stunned by this news. Google reader was my morning paper. I would open it every morning and read my blogs with my morning cup of coffee. It felt like a good friend was leaving me. I immediately started researching replacements. After a little research my plan is to use Feedly.com and bloglovin’ and see which I like best. For the first few days I really focused on bloglovin’ and I was impressed. (A post on Feedly will be coming soon.) The main thing I have realized is how much better either of these options are over google reader. What was I thinking all of those months.

Overal I like bloglovin’ and their Iphone app.

The layout of bloglovin’ is so clean and simple. An image and the first few lines of text from the blog post is usually just enough to get me to click so I can read more. If I am not interested in that post I can mark it as read and it moves out of my main list. If it looks great but I don’t have time I can hit the like button and save it for later. Plus the likes are public so it is similar to liking something on Facebook and can give your favorite blogs even more street cred.

As a fellow blogger one of my favorite features of bloglovin’ is that when I click on a blog post, like this great one from Kelly at Corner of Main, it takes me directly to her site within the bloglovin’ frame. This allows me to click through my other bloglovin’ posts when I am done reading Kelly’s post but it gives her a recorded visit stat. I always felt bad reading in google reader because I knew people were not getting valuable traffic stats from my reading. I made an effort to click as often as I could but it was never an accurate account of how often I read their blogs. The bloglovin’ frame also makes it easy for me to share the posts on Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook.

Bloglovin’ has even more features and benefits that would make me happy to switch.

They make it simple to connect my blog to Facebook. Now my blog posts are shown on my personal facebook page through bloglovin’ and the Wit Wisdom and Food Facebook page via Networked Blogs. I can now reach everyone with minimal work after writing the post.
The Iphone app has come in very handy for reading posts on my lunch. Now I can take all the great information with me. I might have to add a few more new blogs now that it is easier to keep up. The google reader app never had that effect on me.
Bloglovin’ makes it very easy for me to find those new blogs to read. You can search by category and they will give you the up and coming blogs in each category. Up and coming blogs are apparently decided by the amount of new followers in the shortest period of time.
I really hope the bloglovin’ people are ready for all of the converts. They mentioned having some minor glitches this weekend but so far nothing I would complain about.

They also have some drawbacks and limitations that make me hesitate to commit.

While I like the layout I don’t have an option to change it to a different one and who doesn’t like options?
They don’t make it easy for me to find a previous post unless I have liked it
I noticed this morning that it didn’t display one of my favorite posts of the week that happens every Friday. This concerns me a lot! If I am going to commit to this site I have to know that I am going to get all of the posts I ask for

They jury is still out so stay tuned this week for a post on Feedly and follow along on twitter or facebook for more pros and cons through the transition.

Have you already decided where you are going to do your reading after google reader is gone? Have you tried bloglovin’? What are your pros and cons?