bloglines
7 result(s) displayed (1 - 7 of 7):
The End of Bloglines is Nigh - Will Close October 1
RSS is not dead. But Bloglines, one of the most venerable web-based RSS readers, is about to close shop next month. According to a report on TechCrunch, Bloglines' parent company IAC will make an official announcement later today and shut the service down on October 1. In the early days of RSS, Bloglines was the go-to feed reader for early adopters. Over the last few years, however, the company struggled to innovate and hold on to its users.
First Look at SnapGroups: A Delightful Tool For Lightweight Discussion
Mark Fletcher builds software, that's just what he does. He may have sold the system that became Yahoo Groups for $400 million, and then made millions selling Bloglines to Ask.com as well, but that doesn't mean he's going to stop making software. And it's not just any software he makes, either. Those two projects changed millions of peoples' lives.
Tomorrow morning Fletcher will unveil his newest creation, a lightweight group communication tool called SnapGroups. We first wrote about it two weeks ago but hadn't been able to take a look until tonight. We're happy to report that you're probably going to like it a lot: it's easy, it's clear, it's got good social design and it's real time. Check out the screenshots below.
SnapGroups: New Startup Coming From Creator of Yahoo! Groups & Bloglines
Mark Fletcher, the man who built one of the first easy email group services online and sold it to Yahoo! for $400 million, then built former market-leading RSS reader Bloglines and sold it to Ask.com, plans to launch a new service next week called SnapGroups (currently password protected).
Fletcher planned on unveiling the company tonight at Dave McClure's Palo Alto event Lean Startups but had technical problems hours before going on stage that delayed the launch of the site. None the less, he offered some details about what we can expect next week.
Bloglines Returns to Challenge Google Reader - Thank Goodness
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.
Bloglines: Now With Advertising
Today, Bloglines has unveiled a new skin for its public beta site and has announced that it will start displaying ads on its start page. The new skin for the beta is is quite well done and definitely an improvement over the regular Bloglines interface, as well as the last version of the beta skin. The really interesting news, however, is that Bloglines now, for the first time, features advertising on its service after it had originally abandoned the idea when it created a major controversy back in 2005.
Regator: Mainstreaming RSS Aggregators - 100 Invites
While quite a few mainstream users use RSS daily on their personalized homepages without ever knowing it, more traditional RSS aggregators are only slowly expanding beyond the early adopter crowd. Regator, which released a private beta today, is courting these mainstream users by giving them a very straightforward and easy way to browse RSS feeds while keeping the layout of more traditional RSS aggregators.
Feedster Quietly Dies... So Which Blog Search Engine Do You Use?
Blog search engine Feedster has had the following notice on its frontpage for at least a few weeks now:
There is no sign of life on the site and the Feedster blog has already been killed off (the big 404 in the sky).
In terms of the blog search market in general, Feedster has been struggling for 3+ years now - this RWW post in July 2005 shows how Feedster was falling behind Technorati even then. Now Feedster seems to be, if not in the DeadPool, then at least in the PurgatoryPool. PubSub was another victim in this market.
Nowadays, the blog search market seems to be made up of 3 main players - Google Blog Search, Technorati and Bloglines/Ask.com - and a lot of smaller players such as Zuula and Blogdigger. Personally I still use Technorati a few times a week, and the search function of Google Reader. I also am a heavy user of Google's main search, which I find brings up good blog results (i.e. often I don't see the need for a specialist blog search engine). I did a quick poll of the other RWW writers. Josh said he still uses Technorati sometimes, but also Google Blog search. Marshall said that he uses Ask.com for minimizing spam, relies heavily on feeds with subscribers in Bloglines, and uses Technorati too. He finds that Google Blog Search is good for speed.
What blog search engine do you use - and why?
Movable Type search results powered by Fast Search
