After seeing several bloggers I follow recommend Feedly as a good Reader alternative, I switched over this past weekend. Feedly takes Google credentials and synchronizes with Reader, so it was a super easy switch. It's like, Can you click a button? Great! You're in.
The question I had after I started poking around was: What will happen to the blogs I subscribe to after Google Reader is no more? It's nice and all that it syncs now, but Reader is also still around right now.
Answer: On July first (07/01/2013) Google Reader will be shutting down but your data from your Google Reader account will be copied in feedly (feed subscriptions and categories).
Sold!
Here are a couple of screenshots of my Feedly. It's pretty similar to the look of Google Reader, so it's a fairly easy transition.
Some initial comments/thoughts after using it for a few days (caveat - it's possible I just haven't figure out all the functionality yet):
- On the mobile too, the left/right swipe to make one v. many posts read/unread is kind of sensitive. I have more than once accidentally made all posts unread rather than a single post just because my finger lingered a little too long.
- In the Chrome version, the "keep unread" is at the top of the post next to the title. I'd prefer that it be at the bottom because I often don't decide whether or not to revisit it later by keeping it unread until I reach the end. I'd like a button to keep posts unread in the mobile version too.
- It's not as big a deal on the mobile version since I can swipe left/right to move between posts, but in the Chrome version, I haven't found a way to navigate posts with up/down arrows like I could with Reader. I like my posts sorted from newest to oldest and then read posts from the bottom-up. When I get to the bottom of a post, I have to scroll back up to the top of the post to read the newer post above it, which is more inconvenient than being to navigate with up/down arrows. First world problem, I know.