Tonight Bloglines is launching a new design at beta.bloglines.com, which includes a new personalizable Start Page, more views, and drag and drop Ajax functionality. I spoke to new Bloglines GM Eric Engleman about the makeover and tested the Beta Bloglines myself. My judgement below, plus I re-cap the history of Bloglines and how they dropped the ball after being acquired by Ask.com. Finally it looks like Bloglines is back on track, under Engleman. But first, let's review the new features.
Bloglines Beta is the first stage of "a complete redesign of the Bloglines service". The new features include a new personalizeable Start Page (featuring drag and drop functionality to add feeds); 3 feed reading views (Quick View with headlines only, 3-Pane View for an email-like interface, and Full View for "the classic Bloglines page layout, updated"); Drag-and-drop feed management using Ajax; and a new Unread System to manage what to keep and what to ignore. Also upgraded are the 'Add Feeds' process and the 'Full View' option.
Beta Bloglines
There are more features to come, as Beta Bloglines is iterated on - including new options for saving, sending and sharing posts, as well as building link blogs, managing blog rolls, etc. Also coming soon is upgraded developer APIs. One of the more exciting future features from my point of view will be Personalization Preferences, allowing users to edit a feed or settings.
The Bloglines team wants to get their community involved in the Beta, using the Bloglines Forum and encouraging users to blog their feedback. Another point to note is that Bloglines will run two separate sites: "Classic" Bloglines (the old UI, at bloglines.com) and "Beta" Bloglines (the new one described in this post, at beta.bloglines.com). You can use both sites to access your Bloglines subscriptions. The company says that changes that you make to your Bloglines subscriptions in one version (e.g. add or delete a feed) will be automatically updated in the other - so your Bloglines subscriptions will always be in synch.
The Start Page is a great additon, because it allows you to check your favorite feeds before delving into your full feed "library". Beta Bloglines enables you to drag and drop feeds into your Start page.
Beta Bloglines Start Page
The new Bloglines beta has a lot of Ajax functionality, allowing you to drag and drop feeds, get pop-over previews, and more. Overall it provides a much slicker user interface than the old Bloglines.
Bloglines Beta has 3 viewing options:
1) Quick View - allowing you to just scan the headlines.
2) Full view - so you can read all the content in one place. This is the traditional Bloglines view, given a slight UI makeover (rounded corners, Ajax, etc).
3) 3-Pane view - using the email UI favored by many desktop RSS Readers and also My Yahoo.
Bloglines is one of the oldest browser-based RSS Readers on the Web - and up until Google Reader came along, it was the dominant one too. I was a very early user of Bloglines (I signed up in 2003 when it first came out) and for a good couple of years it was my RSS Reader of choice. Under the helm of founder Mark Fletcher, Bloglines kept ahead of its competition - even the more functional and richer desktop RSS Readers - and continued to grow its market lead.
Then Bloglines got acquired by Ask.com in February 2005 and the innovation ground to a halt. Bloglines did add some search elements in March 2005 and the service showed no signs of slowing its user growth - in May 2005 Bloglines dominated the RSS Reader market. But despite that, the rot had begun to set in. In October 2005 I lamented that Bloglines was no longer innovating. Fletcher left Ask.com in June 2006 and for many more months Bloglines languished, with seemingly little interest within Ask.com to improve the service - despite the regular protests by loyal users such as myself. So many of its early adopter users moved onto something else - in my case Google Reader, which was innovating in a big way during 2006.
Fast forward to August 2007 and finally we're seeing a makeover of Bloglines, under the guidance of new Bloglines GM Eric Engleman. As I noted to Eric during our conversation, many early adopters loved Bloglines when it first came out. It was something totally new and to many of us it represented the best of this thing called web 2.0. So to see it being virtually ignored by its new owner over the past two years (mid-2005 till now) was a real shame.
Can Bloglines regain the support of the early adopter crowd and the thousands of other fans it used to have (and perhaps still does)? My first impressions are of a slick new RSS Reader interface - and it actually seems faster than Google Reader, which does have its quirks. The Bloglines Start Page is fantastic and will allow me to keep tabs on the feeds that are most important to me. The drag and drop touches are excellent, and the Ajax is very smooth and relevant.
To the cons -- at this point I'm not sure about the way Beta Bloglines shows folders. With Google Reader, it lists out the entire content of the folder (e.g. 15 feeds) as a list of post titles. But with Beta Bloglines, you get the Start Page interface showing each feed separately (see below). I prefer the big list a la Google Reader. Likewise the Beta Bloglines 3-pane view is a little awkward when dealing with folders.
I'll continue to test it out, but for now: Bloglines has me back as a fan! I'm sure they'll be thrilled to hear that :-) I'll be doing lots of comparisions in the coming weeks - but not to the Classic Bloglines... I'll be comparing it to Google Reader!
Check it out and let us know what you think of Beta Bloglines.
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The new design looks pretty good. However, long live Google Reader!
Posted by: Sotek | August 26, 2007 10:45 PM
I looked at the new layout, which is a big change. I tested it for some minutes and decided to switch back from Google Reader to my beloved Bloglines. :-)
Posted by: Kalyxo | August 26, 2007 10:50 PM
I'm glad to see Google Reader getting a least a little competition. I hope more companies will make innovative readers with personalizaton. Hopefully beyond custom start pages, too. It's a rich area, and with export/import via OPML, users can easily test drive muliple solutions.
Posted by: Israel L | August 26, 2007 11:26 PM
Richard, to get the list like in Google Reader, switch your folder view to Full View, not Quick View. The three seperate views are whate makes the new version work, if you ask me.
http://google.blognewschannel.com/archives/2007/08/27/bloglines-launching-all-new-all-better-version/
Posted by: Nathan Weinberg | August 26, 2007 11:45 PM
Nathan, but that lists out the posts in alphabetical order (e.g. Anil Dash's posts, followed by Ars Technica, etc). Is there a way to list out a folder by date - e.g. XYZ Blog first if they posted 2 minutes ago?
Posted by: Richard MacManus | August 27, 2007 12:10 AM
Richard, Do you have any idea when their developer API is expected to be released? Is it going to be as rich as Google reader's API?
http://code.google.com/p/pyrfeed/wiki/GoogleReaderAPI
-Manoj
Posted by: Manoj | August 27, 2007 12:11 AM
I would be severely disappointed if they do not support google gears.
There is just no reason not to especially if they want to continue competing with Google Reader. I resisted moving away from Bloglines because I simply loved their interface and speed. But finally jumped when Google Reader provided awesome offline capabilities using Gears.
Posted by: AJ | August 27, 2007 1:44 AM
Quite an improvement. But they appear to have removed the function of being able to see who subscribed to a feed and then seeing that persons other subscriptions, which was in the old version and was quite useful
Posted by: juniorbonner | August 27, 2007 2:02 AM
I am a longtime Bloglines user and I've stayed loyal to Bloglines even when Google Reader came out. I have literally hundreds of items tagged for retention in bloglines, so the costs of switching are pretty high. In general, the new interface interests me - I like the reading options in particular. It was great that when I accessed the beta using IE, I got a message saying that my browser was not compatible and to use Firefox instead! That totally rocks. I use Firefox all the time outside of work (we standardized on IE) so major props to the developers for focusing on Firefox first. The big concern I have right now is that when I logged in, none of my feeds came over into the beta. I'm hoping this is an IE issue and that the feeds come over when I try it out under Firefox at home. But if I have to re-add all my feeds, I'll never upgrade to the new version.
Posted by: Jay | August 27, 2007 5:27 AM
Hi there long time reader first time commenter.
I love the new layout and look of bloglines and have switched back from google reader! Sweeet!
http://www.askTheAdmin.com
Posted by: Joey Admin | August 27, 2007 6:17 AM
For those who made the switch to Bloglines last night, please join us in the forums on Bloglines or tell us in the RW/W comments:
What do you like about the beta?
What needs to be improved?
what yo to tell us
Posted by: Eric Engleman | August 27, 2007 9:04 AM
Whooops!
I'm a little tired after the launch.
Just keep telling us what you think. We're listening.
Eric Engleman - Bloglines!
Posted by: Eric Engleman | August 27, 2007 9:08 AM
Does anyone know what exactly the new "Unread system" is? Or what changes that means?
Thanks!
Posted by: Kaxx | August 27, 2007 9:24 AM
Hmm, looks like of like Flock's "My World" startpage... It strikes me as odd that Flock wouldn't partner with someone on that aspect of the browser... especially with hard work like this going into making feed reading on the web actually work, Flock's effort seems fairly week in comparison.
Any thoughts on how this stacks up with NewsGator -- since NewsGator syncs with NetNewsWire?
Posted by: Chris Messina | August 27, 2007 10:56 AM
In case anyone is interested, I created a video review:
http://www.centernetworks.com/video-review-new-bloglines-beta
Posted by: Allen Stern | August 27, 2007 1:23 PM
Looks nice.
http://eBooksBay.Org
Posted by: eBooksBay | August 27, 2007 1:47 PM
looks interesting, I'll play with the beta around and see if it's worth switching over from netvibes
Posted by: sylv3rblade | August 27, 2007 1:50 PM
I've logged my own impressions, especially by comparison to Google Reader, at:
http://www.thoughtstart.com/2007/08/bloglines-beta-first-impressions/
@Chris Messina:
If you happen to be a fan of Google Reader or even if you love how you can navigate NetNewsWire by keyboard alone, I think the Bloglines beta is already better positioned as a Google Reader competitor that NewsGator Online. It's funny, I've just posted a review of NewsGator Online and its idiosyncracies yesterday:
http://www.thoughtstart.com/2007/08/quick-review-newsgator-online-and-newsgator-mobile-for-the-iphone/
@Kaxx:
I think by the "Unread" system they mean the very Google Reader-y auto mark read as you move from one post to the next. It even shades the read articles, just like Google Reader.
Posted by: Dylan Damian | August 27, 2007 6:15 PM
Personally, I think the UI is fine. The service would be a whole lot better if it stopped duplicating posts. You see a post and more often then not, the next time you log in, you'll see the same post listed as new. It is so annoying and happens so often. I don't know if it is a Blines problem or something to do with the feed. But fixing that makes a whole lot more useful sense than cosmetics.
Posted by: Brian S | August 27, 2007 7:38 PM
About the folders… I like them. They organize your feeds when you have dozens of them.
I couldn't use Google Reader just because of this annoyance. :)
Posted by: Alenônimo | August 27, 2007 10:01 PM
I left bloglines about a year ago, after I relised that they weren't going to let me view all posts chronologically (not just in the groups - the big list idea that was mentioned earlier).
I also couldn't use an RSS reader that didn't skip to the next unread post when I press 'n'.
Posted by: kybernetikos | August 30, 2007 2:42 AM
Hmm, I don't see any of my previously saved articles showing up in the beta version so I'm assuming/hoping that those will be there in the final version.
Posted by: Matt | August 31, 2007 7:42 AM