Old Reader Resurfaces

Let's all bow our heads in remembrance of Google Reader. Nothing else has come close to its simplicity and efficiency.

The mantle was taken up by Old Reader, Google's original reader, but now it too is being revamped so as to earn revenue.

Old Reader is charging for anything over 100 blog subscriptions. The fee is pretty reasonable, but I still hate the idea of paying.

I use Feedly as my main reader, but I like Old Reader for reading blogs on my smart phone. Since Old Reader will suspend service for anything over a hundred blog feeds, I decided to do some serious demolition work.

I had over 900 blog feeds on Old Reader and I hacked away until there were only fifty. Who was left?

Mostly friends' blogs, and blogs that contained useful information that was presented in a casual conversational tone.

I spent hours deciding who would stay and who would go. In the end, it all depended on how human they sounded. I was surprised how important that was to me.

People who ranted, whined, or were long-winded were deleted immediately. If I'm reading on my phone it's because I'm away from home, waiting for my turn in a queue. I don't want to be bored or annoyed on top of being inconvenienced.

It was such a relief to chip away all those excess blogs, I might use next Sunday to delete blogs from Feedly too. 

Before I deleted anyone, I scrolled through a list of a dozen+ posts for each blog. If most of their headlines started with "Release", "Queries", or "Buy My Book", I deleted them. It was tedious, but I didn't want to delete anyone just for having two or three bad posts in a row. You can't be sparkly every time.

Do you use a reader for your blog feeds? Are you happy with it? I've never been able to load Feedly on my phone without adding blogs manually--and I'm not going to do that!