Goodbye Bloglines (?)

Is this the end? Only time will tell, I guess. Google Reader has been re-released and it appears to be much better than what it used to.
My frustration with it the first time around was the endless list of feeds I had to read. I never knew how many more I had to read, it was depressing, in my opinion, it wasn’t fully featured and it definitely was not up to Google standards. I jumped in thinking this would be a great thing only to be disappointed and I reverted back to Bloglines, which has always been adequate.

On Thursday, September 28, Google released the newest version of the Google Reader and according to the Google Reader Blog:

As of today, Google Reader has a new look — and even more important, a lot of new features that we think you’ll like. We’ve listened to your feedback, done usability research, and examined all the ways that people consume content on the web, from feed readers to email clients. With a clean interface and some JavaScript wizardry, we think we’ve built an application that accommodates a wide range of reading styles while being fun and easy to use.

I started out by importing my opml file from Bloglines and running both side by side. Bloglines picks up new posts a little quicker but other than that, the new reader is consistent with what I’m used to. It has more of a Bloglines feel to it, your feed list on the left and when you click a feed, you get the individual feeds on the right. The right side is more of a Gmail kind of feel, each post is a row, bold faced for unread and normal for read, when you click a post, it expands to show the entire post.

I realized today that I haven’t even opened Bloglines. Could this be the end? It’s too early to tell but so far, I’m happy with Google Reader and it’s Web 2.0 feel. Another feature that is included is the ability to star a post, just like Gmail and also the ability to tag posts. I see value in that feature, although I haven’t taken the time to understand how to view my tagged posts. My first thought with tagging posts is to tag ones that I want to link to, which is how I have begun.

Time will tell how well accepted Google Reader becomes. To Bloglines credit, they also released some new features on the same day and it has a more web 2.0 feel. C’mon Bloglines! Google Reader has turned up the heat, time to take it up a notch.

Give me something that blows Google out of the water, make it tough for me to decide who to use for my feed reader.

Right now, for the moment, it’s Google, but give me new features, I’m easy, I can be woo’d back over for the right reasons.