Google Reader vs Bloglines

I have just jumped ship from Bloglines Beta to Google Reader for my RSS feeds. This wasn't a lightly made decision as I have been a Bloglines/Bloglines Beta user for years now. Also as someone who works in 'New Media' there is nothing more irritating than people complaining about a free beta service. But I feel now that I have waited long enough for the problems to be ironed out so to make my life easier I have changed over to Google Reader. My decision to change sites is partly all the error messages such as this one; as I check my RSS feeds daily this has become very irksome.

There are more in depth discussions of the two sites here and here. I am keeping my Bloglines account and depending on how Google Reader pans out I may jump back when all the issues with Bloglines Beta are ironed out. So kudos to Bloglines staff but I am sorry I have to go for now.

I have also used this as an opportunity to slim down the number of RSS feeds I subscribe to. I am almost ashamed to say that I was subscribed to a whapping 288 feeds. This is now down to 116 feeds and I plan to trim this down to about 50. My problem isn't so much the personal blogs run by one person, it is easy (and nice) to keep up with these (you guys are great! :), but I have removed myself from many of the much bigger sites subscriptions, sometimes these update many many times a day and I simply don't have time to skim read that much. I am now using delicious to keep up with these bigger sites - dropping in on them when I have the time or inclination.

I am interested if anyone else has any opinions on RSS readers and RSS subscriptions? What do you use to read your RSS? How many RSS feeds do you subscribe to?

And I hope you are having a nice Saturday - it has just got sunny here in time to have a BBQ :)

Comments

[Tina]

Hi, Alice, my name is Tina. A few months ago you wrote a post on another blog. It was about an owl with love in its eyes, in a children's book. I have been trying to find out what book that was for 15 years! Every couple of months I Google "book owl with love in its eyes" just to see what comes up. Yours is the first post I've had that lets me know I really do remember that book! Anyway, do you happen to remember the name of the book?
thanks, tina

[alice]

Hi Tina!

I have had a look at the post that you mean and it is actually the person below my comment that mentions the book. I posted something not very interesting like 'That owl looks amazing'. I hope that the other person can help you with your book search.

:)

[rebecca]

I have been a Bloglines user for quite a while now, but like you I do get annoyed with the errors and also other little bugs (like when it tells me there have been 200 news post from one blog in the course of a day!) Also, some of the RSS feeds I subscribe to get disconnected occasionally for some reason, which is very annoying.

Maybe I will give Google Reader a try. Thanks for this informative post.