“I wish we still had Google Reader.”
I hear that regularly, the most recently from a professional a copywriter who’s helping us on our site incorporating The Library at LexBlog.
Google Reader was a RSS reader that enabled one to subscribe to RSS feeds from blogs, newspaper sites, websites and what have you. The New Times, I recall then, had over 100 RSS feeds. You just clicked in the footer of their site to get a list of their feeds.
Subscribe to a feed, put It in a folder and you have your daily news organized by subject. Better than social algorithms delivering your news.
Fact is Google Reader didn’t go away. There’s Feedly, which I used them and use now. Feedly is a RSS reader used to get feeds from blogs, news sites and what have you. More sites than not have RSS feeds, including most digital legal publishing on law firm sites.
Feedly, which is green and white, may not be as happy as Google Reader was with the bright white accented with the red and blue, à la the Google sites of today.
But Feedly works just as well, except maybe better.
- Find a feed.
- Didn’t find a feed? Search by name of the subject or publication and Feedly will find it.
- Organize your feeds by folder.
- Display is great as you can display by folder or a short list of stories within all folders mentioned.
- Do a search on a subject and Feedly will get you a feed of stories on the subject via Google News.
The New York Times is on Feedly. 81 RSS feeds broken down by subject. Actually better than trying to browse The Times.
The heart of the net lies in genuine engagement. Listening and communicating, versus shouting out of a blow horn. Especially if you are looking to build a name and relationships.
You have to listen to engage. Google Reader enabled you to listen. Feedly enables you to do so, today.