I've been using Bloglines for quite a while to subscibe to web feeds, and it has worked wonderfully even with over 1000 subscriptions. Looking around about 18 months ago, nothing else seemed to deal well with that number of feeds.Google Reader though, has developed and looks like a possible competitor. So in this post I'll take a quick look at how the two compare.
Browsing
With both services the experience of browsing feeds, marking them as read, and following links is fine. There is no major difference between the two.
Subscribing
Subscribing to feeds is simple in both, but while Bloglines makes it easy to choose what folder the feed with be held in, Google requires you to choose it manually. A small point, but it's an extra step.
Language translation
With Bloglines I used Yahoo Pipes to translate the feed's contents into English, which takes 10 minutes to set up, but Google reader allows you to set a feed to be translated into your language by going to 'Folder settings' and choosing 'Translate into my language'. This is much easier.
Other points
If you use lots of Google's applications, Google Reader would integrate well with them, and save you logging into an extra service. If you like stats, Google Reader keeps track of which feeds you are reading posts from, amoung other things. Bloglines still makes it easier than Google Reader to manage large numbers of feeds, and folders.
In Conclusion
Overall there isn't a major difference between the two services. Because it is easy to try different feed readers, by exporting your OPML file and importing it into another service, it's easy to give both a go and discover which works best for you.
3 comments:
A major annoyance I had with Bloglines was it showing me the same post repeatedly. I realized there was a setting, but even feeds set to not were. Very annoying.
At the time I left about a year ago, Bloglines had stability issues. Between it taking days to get posts and logins failing, I finally just moved.
The Bloglines search sucked horribly. Finding anything was a nightmare. I was pleasantly surprised
That's interesting Sneezy. I'd heard people talk of the "troubled Bloglines", but not understood what they meant. I think that Bloglines is more stable than it was, but perhaps other people are having greater issues than me.
Hi,
I use Netnewswire on both my Macbook & iPodTouch, and a Newsgator account to sync what I have read on either and my work PC with FeedDemon(Windows)!
It allows me to manage hundreds of feeds and view online as well via Newsgator. I haven't tried Google Reader only because I'm happy with my present solution.
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