Popular RSS reader Bloglines says it's solved the much publicized recent problems with feed updating that lead smaller services to pursue its users and Google Reader triumphalists to declare the RSS reader market all zipped up. It's true that Bloglines has a lot of problems, but all software does and competition is incredibly important in any sector, including among RSS readers.
Despite its shortcomings, Bloglines is worth a look and when it works it works very well for many people. RSS is such a powerful media that it's essential that the market leader, Google, be kept on their toes.
In a lunchtime announcement today, Bloglines' Eric Engleman (usually a very charming fellow) offered an update that's unlikely to satisfy at least the most discerning Bloglines users.
Some folks might have noticed that specific feeds were not updating recently on Bloglines, and we wanted to update you and fill you in on what's been going on. We have figured out what the glitch has been. Over the weekend, a fix was released on Bloglines to resolve the issue. All feeds should now be updating and back to normal.
That doesn't sound like filling in anyone about what's been going on, that sounds like an assurance that unnamed problems are solved. That's fine, it was probably a pretty simple error that lead to feeds not being checked for updates.
Update: More details from Engleman...
More technical details is that there was a bug related to the RSS crawling infrastructure relating to feeds that "errored" out. In other words, specific feeds would "error" out then not get recrawled. Prior to this last weekend, feeds were being fixed on a case by case basis. As of this weekend, all feeds should be updating correctly.
On a good day, Bloglines has a lot going for it. It supports OpenID login, which is great. The year-old Beta version is much more attractive than the washed out colors of Google Reader. Bloglines Mobile is a much better mobile reader than Google Reader Mobile, though we haven't tested out the iPhone versions. It's nice that Bloglines shows you how many subscribers a feed has whenever you look at it, and thank goodness for those subscriber counts being put to use for spam control in parent company Ask.com's blog search, one of the best blog search engines on the web.
Bloglines lets you organize your own startpage view by dragging and dropping feeds you're subscribed to. That's pretty cool. We wrote about the new version of Bloglines a year ago this summer and we really liked it a lot.
Unfortunately, we can't figure out how to get a "river of news" view inside the new Bloglines, meaning: show me the most recent individual post from all the feeds in a folder, in the order the item arrived in, don't show me every unread item in one feed before you show me another. That's a deal-killer for this author, though otherwise I'd love to use the Bloglines Beta instead of Google Reader.
Google Reader, despite its market dominance, superior feature set and burning love from user/advocates, should not be the end of RSS reader development. Google's control over huge stores of information, including your reading history, isn't an unconditional good. Perhaps more important to users though, is the fact that Google Apps tend to be crude substitutes for real software and they are almost never updated. Google Reader may be one of the least crude, but it took years before the company added search of all things to Google Reader.
Google made huge waves earlier this month when they said that some time soon they will add RSS to web search queries, making them the last major search engine to do so. This weekend Google made changes to its iGoogle RSS startpage that enraged millions of users.
Do you really want Google to nail down complete dominance over the world of RSS? We sure don't. We want to see a multitude of viable companies offering competing feature sets, being responsive to their users' needs and innovating. In other words, Long Live Bloglines!
Comments
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Marshall:
Thanks for this update. I stopped using BlogLines a few weeks ago when I couldn't access feeds. I went to Google Reader after BlogLines didn't respond to my request for help getting WSJ.com, Reuters and other key feeds for my news gathering. I'll never go back. As far as I'm concerned, BlogLines, while solid when it works, is dead to me.
Posted by: Clint Boulton | October 20, 2008 2:23 PM
Clint, yes if you're a professional writer you probably don't want to be relying on Bloglines. The nice thing about OPML is that you can use one reader or another as a backup if you throw your OPML file in both. If you really like Bloglines a lot, when it works, then that might not hurt to try. It really feels like a betrayal when the system that's supposed to bring you the world just stops suddenly though, doesn't it?
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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October 20, 2008 2:29 PM
I've been using Bloglines for going on 4 years now, and have been a big fan of the Beta version and generally like Bloglines better than any other Reader I've tried. However, I recently switched to Google because I was frustrated with the Bloglines database errors, server issues and of course the recent issue of getting current feed info. I will happily switch back if all problems are fixed. The 3- pane "site" view is great and I love the Dashboard. I'm hoping all is good in Bloglines land, because it's a great product.
Posted by: Chris Mullins | October 20, 2008 2:31 PM
Recent posts (here and elsewhere) about Bloglines make it sound as though Google Reader is the only alternative. Say it ain't so!
Posted by: Andrew | October 20, 2008 2:42 PM
Andrew, it aint so. See, for example, the list at http://delicious.com/popular/rssreader
Many people really like FeedDemon/NetNewsWire, Newsfire, etc.
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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October 20, 2008 2:55 PM
I couldn't access my own feed on Bloglines for a few days last week. Today it seems back and interestingly my Subscriber numbers jumped back up by about 10%. I also noticed that the angry emails I was getting from readers telling me that my feed was broken have stopped (at last).
As a publisher it can be quite frustrating to see such a popular tool able to influence your reader numbers like this. Lets just hope Google Reader doesn't have such glitches or I suspect all our numbers will be down a lot more than just 10%!
Posted by: Darren Rowse | October 20, 2008 5:46 PM
I love Bloglines and their improvements in the last year have made it an even better fit for me...I answer with a resounding no to Google Reader dominance!
Posted by: Kara | October 20, 2008 6:05 PM
If you want the reliability of Google Reader but a more fun interface and better sharing capabilities, you might want to give feedly a try.
Posted by: Edwin Khodabakchian | October 20, 2008 6:26 PM
I really prefer Bloglines's functionality to all the other feed readers I've tried, but the unacknowledged issues they've had for several weeks (as well as refusing to reply to "contact us" inquiries) drove me to Windows Live. If just once during the weeks without reliable feeds, Bloglines had posted on their news page that they were aware that there was a problem, I would have waited and gone back when it was fixed. Instead, they blew us all off. Bloglines is a good feed reader but they have lousy customer service.
Posted by: Gwen | October 20, 2008 8:02 PM
I agree, had they at least acknowledged a programming issue I would have stayed with BL. Oh well...
Posted by: D | October 20, 2008 9:04 PM
I'd switch to GReader, but the iPhone version of Bloglines is VASTLY superior. I'm glad they're making progress though. Hopefully IAC sells it off to someone who can actually do something with it.
Posted by: John S. | October 20, 2008 9:26 PM
Totally agree...Google should not have Not Have Monopoly Control Over RSS Readers.
I'm an feed junky and last year when I could not find a reader other than googles that had the features I wanted, I decided to build one that matched and bettered the google reader feature set
At adelph.us we love to read rss feeds and we thought it would be a great idea to integrate a full featured rss/atom feed reader into the adelph.us social communication platform. We looked at some of the available feed readers and while many of them are very good, most lacked some key features that we believe are needed to help members easily add, read, and recycle feeds. At adelph.us we believe that there should be more than one choice for internet users when it comes to key applications like feed readers. We think that a feed reader should be tightly integrated into a unified social communication platform that allows members to use all of the features with one log or openid.
We believe in the Open Source development community, and because of this in the near future we will be releasing the adelph.us reader under an Open Source license. This means that the adelph.us reader will continue to evolve to meet the needs of users and developers.The adelph.us reader has all of the features that you would expect in a top of the line feed reader. When we started the development process we wanted to make sure that we matched feature for feature with the best feed readers. Once we had the key features list we began to add new features that would make the adelph.us feed reader an easy to use aggregator that gives members the ability to read, share, and republish feeds.
Some adelph.us Reader Features
* Feed Reader tightly integrated into adelph.us social communication platform
* Easy to use and intuitive user interface
* Add feeds from an existing OPML file
* Add rss/atom feeds as well as feeds from existing social services
* Share feed items with a note ( Public, Private, Friend (s), Group(s) )
* Email feed items with a note
* Tag feed item
* Re Publish feed item to blog
* Re Publish entire feed to blog
* Tabbed feed viewing
* Feed viewing options (Bottom, Right, Hide)
* Integrated feed search
* Feed Categorization using tags
* Latest feeds section (Shows feeds from the last 1 hour, 2 hours, 5 hours)
Posted by: william | October 20, 2008 9:53 PM
Only weeks? Seriously?
The feeds not updating issue was an ongoing problem (for me) since sometime around 2005 during the transition to Ask and when RSS was hitting mainstream. It would consistently come back every few weeks on feeds from all types of sites and I would constantly contact support about it, almost never receiving an actual response.
I finally left them for Google Reader 2 years ago when they had the redesign that made it usable for large numbers of feeds and ditched the strange lens thing.
The entire time Bloglines had never acknowledged that something was fundamentally wrong with the system design and it's incredible that it took them this long to fix it (if it is in fact fixed). Fancy UI is useless when I can't depend on it to actually get the updates from the feeds.
Posted by: Tom | October 20, 2008 9:53 PM
jiminy, if you really care about a quality experience why are you using a web app?they'refine when you're away from your machine and as a syncing conduit but use something heavy-duty like nnw if you're that into rss.
Posted by: Jhn | October 20, 2008 9:59 PM
I've tried Google Reader the last couple of days because of the mentioned feed problems with Bloglines.
I did NOT really like GReader at all (unless I missed certain options) for the following reasons:
- small window on bottom left where I could see all my feeds
- small right window where the articles appear; especially when you got many tabs open. I got to the point where I only could see 2-3 articles! Also this annoying wide right side bar...
- you can't scroll very quickly through all articles via the scrollbar because it's reading articles page by page (dynamic scrollbar)
- not being able to clearly see which feed the article is coming from when you click on a folder with multiple feeds in it. I love the clear distinction in bloglines.
- I actually do not want the "river of news"; that way it's a lot harder to skip news items from a feed I'm not interested in at the moment/don't have time for.
So I'm glad all my bloglines feeds are back again and happy I can go back to it. Though I totally agree they should have acknowledged in some way (at least on the homepage or blog) that they were working on the problem.
Totally agree: Long Live Bloglines!
Posted by: MrFeedReader | October 21, 2008 1:54 AM
If it weren't the first time that Bloglines had this issue, I may have suffered through it. But it's much more than that. I can't scroll past more than 30 pinned items at a time (a pain when you're saving a lot of articles for later). I get loading errors regularly. It's slow as snot. Some of my feeds got deleted from my reader without my knowledge. These are simply unacceptable bugs, even in a beta.
Bloglines can take their buggy POS and keep it.
Posted by: Jesse Harris | October 21, 2008 8:18 AM
AGREE totally on the "river of views" recent posts requirement.
Not having it is a deal-breaker.
Bloglines, jeebus, come on. Can't you offer this one feature?
I will happily switch when this feature is available, but not until then. I am dumbfounded that Bloglines doesn't know this.
Posted by: Jeremy Willett | October 21, 2008 8:40 AM
One feature that I think would be a real game-changer would be better integration of blogging APIs, so that you can blog on a feed item right from within the interface. Imagine highlighting text within a feed item, click "blog it", select the blog from your predefined options, and then see a Compose window pop up with the text already blockquoted and the original feed item source linked in. This would streamline the blogging workflow for a lot of bloggers and really increase productivity, which is the whole reason anyone uses a feed reader in teh first place. A feed reader is not enough.
Posted by: Aziz Poonawalla
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October 21, 2008 10:24 AM
When the bloglines issue started I was very frustrated until I figured out that FeedBurner feeds were still working. The same blog which might have Atom, RSS2 and maybe even a third feed type would fail, while the FeedBurner feed was up to date and running smoothly. That's kind of strange because FeedBurner is owned by Google and if anything should stop working on bloglines it's that :-)
The problem is that you can't always find the FeedBurner feed for some reason. You have to do some smart guessing in some cases.
I usually read my blogs on a BlackBerry and I haven't found anything that compares to bloglines mobile. Sure, it has it's problems, like "Update New" being spotty or refresh issues. But I have found that running Opera Browser works the best. I tried Google Reader but it was horrible.
Thanks for the update!
Posted by: Abba-Dad | October 21, 2008 4:05 PM
aziz, cool
Posted by: Gregory Lent
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October 22, 2008 2:57 AM
I was a several-year BL user until I finally had had enough a few weeks ago. Good for them if they have overcome a few specific issues that popped up recently. Unfortunately we long-time BL users are all too familiar with sporadic performance problems that have plagued the site pretty much since its inception.
I've spent a few weeks setting up and getting used to Google Reader. When it is working I strongly prefer BL. But, before all the nuances of layout and interface come into play, my basic demand is simple: I want to check my feeds. If I can't do that it really doesn't matter how slick the site is.
I may retry it at some point, but at this point I'm not going to drop everything and switch back just because BL says that there were a few problems and now they are fixed.
Posted by: Brian | October 22, 2008 10:14 AM