The weekend’s non-news is that feed reader Bloglines is down. Who cares… in fact has anyone noticed it? The once dominant feed-reader has been on the decline for years, and no, the decline did not start with the sale to Ask, but long before. Ask apparently failed to sell it, does not know what to do with it, and in lieu of shutting it down it just allows it die slowly.
Oh, well.. like I’ve said before, There is Only One Feed Reader – Google. R.I.P Bloglines.
There may only be one feed reader, but feed readers aren’t the only way to aggregate and present news.
The current mechanisms of copying and pasting URLs for RSS from websites to reader apps is a little inaccessible to most users.
There’s a need for more universal mechanisms for people to aggregate and filter news…I’m not sure that Google Reader or Bloglines address this, but smaller startups like Feedly, Ensembli and others are experimenting in this area.
Ensembli … cool name:-)
OK, will check it out. But my problem isn’t lack of interesting stuff to read, but the opposite.. i.e. I’m more inclined to follow just those I really want to, rather then looking for recommendations.
Hey Zoli – thanks!
With Ensembli we’re trying to encourage people to follow topics rather than sources so they get a good cross-source view of a subject, as well as tracking how people use suggested stories.
It’s early days for us, but we’re not trying to address the Google Reader or Bloglines market, but the millions more who don’t use those services and just want personalised news, not dealing with feeds etc