Google Reader Shutting Down!

Big news yesterday for blogger, blog readers and Google.  Google announced yesterday that they will be shutting down their Google Reader product July 1st of this year.  If you are like me, that is heart-breaking news.  I subscribe to over 200 blogs; and though I do not visit and read every one of them, Google Reader has become a great resource for me and a great way to search.

Nevertheless, we move on.

Alex Kantrowitz from Forbes made some great points about how we do not own the products and services we use online:

"No matter how much work we put in to optimize our online presences, our tools and our experiences, we are still at the mercy of big companies controlling the platforms we operate on...they can make whatever call they want.  And Wednesday night, Google made theirs."  Read More

Drew Olanoff from TechCrunch made some great points and truths about RSS and blog readers:

"Google Reader was just a glorified email inbox." 

So, what do we do now?

There are still a good amount of products out there that do a decent job with collecting and aggregating RSS feeds from blogs.  Here are some articles I have found that give some great suggestions for a Google Reader alternative.

CNet has a great focus on readers that were available on the Web as well as iOS and Android (good thinkin')

Lifehacker gives some explanation of the whole RSS proces as well as how to deal with your current Google Reader subscriptions.

ComputerWorld showcases several articles that feature some great Google Reader alternatives.

My fave and why

After tossing up a couple of options, Feedly is my favorite.  Number one, I need something that I can access on the web as well as an iOS app for my iPad.  Secondly, I can send interesting articles and pages to Pocket; which is my "read later" application (I'll talk about that another time).  The other feature that sold me on this service was its user interface.  I love the flow and visual design of the site and the iOS app; easy to flow through and nice to look at when reading.  With these three major features, I find Feedly the best alternative to Google Reader.  Plus, Feedly just announced that they will offer seamless transitioning from Google Reader to Feedly.

Can't Beat That!

With this huge turn of events from such a giant at Google is, the big question is:

Is blogging heading to strictly micro-blogging on social networks?