My good friend Jack Vinson has put together the following useful information for blog readers who are using Bloglines and now in need of a new solution. Like Jack, it appears that about a quarter of my current subscribers use Bloglines to follow McGee’s Musings. If that applies to you, Jack’s advice is applicable to your needs.
Bloglines is shutting down at the end of September. If you are using Bloglines to read Knowledge Jolt, please find a new RSS reader. Here are some possibilities for your switch from Bloglines.
For what it’s worth, about 1/4 of the people reading my blog come from Bloglines, according to Feedburner. When I look at website referrer information, I see a very small number of people coming to my website from Bloglines.
First off, you need to get your subscriptions. Some services know how to read from Bloglines, but in case they don’t you need to find the "Export Subscriptions" option under the Feeds tab. Your browser should offer to save the file to your computer. You can then import these subscriptions into any other reader. (Bloglines are showing you how to do that on the home page.)
Then you need to pick a new reader. As far as reading options, the biggest player in the room is Google Reader (50% of my readers – and similar statistics for many others). The Google Reader team have even written a welcome post for people who might be making the switch. A welcome and a look back:
We know that nothing will be quite like Bloglines in the hearts of its users, but if you’re looking for another online feed reader, we encourage you to give Reader a shot. All you need is a Google account (you already have one if you use Gmail) — and here’s a video to help you get started. It’s also very easy to bring your Bloglines subscriptions over, you just have to export them from Bloglines and import them into Reader.
There are a number of other web-based options. And, like Google Reader, there are some that provide access via multiple devices, such as Netvibes and NewsGator. I’ve noticed that there are some of the newer "social dashboard" applications that incorporate feed reading, such as Seesmic. And there are a number of standalone applications (RSS readers or news aggregators), such as my recent looks at RSS Bandit. It’s also possible to pull a web feed into Outlook or Firefox or Internet Explorer directly.
[Image is my mashup on the Bloglines logo.]
Are you reading Knowledge Jolt via Bloglines?
Jack Vinson
Fri, 17 Sep 2010 23:03:27 GMT
