When I first started blogging and reading others' blogs, I tried out two stand-alone desktop applications for keeping up to date with my favorite bloggers and other news sites:
While both RssBandit and FeedDemon have slick UIs and are easy to use, I haven't used either for several years. My main gripe was not with the programs, per se, but the model itself: I didn't like having a separate program for reading blog entries. For starters, it wedded my blog subscriptions to a single computer. Second, it meant yet another program I'd have to launch at startup and yet another icon cluttering up my task tray. Back in October 2005 I wrote a blog entry lamenting stand-along blog readers: The Future of Third-Party Offline Aggregators? Are RssBandit and its Kin Dead Weight?
There are a number of popular offline aggregators available. By 'offline' I mean that these aggregators can be used while not connected to the Internet. ... The future of aggregators, in my opinion, are those that are either online ... or are part of the experience of existing 'everyman' applications (i.e., email or web browsing) and, preferrably, are preinstalled with the software. The online aggregators seem to make a lot more sense, having a number of advantages of their offline kin:
- Not bound to a particular computer - I can be at home, at the office, or on vacation - my subscriptions travel with me.
- Can utilize the 'social network' - services like Findory make it easy for me to get recommended news and blog items based on my clickthroughs. Services like del.icio.us allow me to share my online habits/sites/subscriptions with others with like interests. I can see what the most popular feeds are, or explore the subscriptions of those whose interests match mine.
- Easier to 'install' and 'uninstall' - want to install My Yahoo! on your computer? Fire up the ol' browser and enter http://my.yahoo.com - couldn't be easier. And uninstalling's as easy as not visiting the site again.
- No resource consumption - doesn't matter if I subscribe to one feed or a hundred - the disk space and bandwidth consumed on my computer stay constant when using an online service.
Another advantage of online blog readers (or any online application, for that matter) is uniquitous upgrades. When Microsoft releases a new version of Office, it is applied only to those peoples' computers who buy the upgrade and install it. When Microsoft releases a new version of Hotmail, however, the update is applied to all users instantaneously. This leads to more rapid application updates, features, and bug fixes.
Since my blog post in 2005, we have seen better integration of RSS feed support in the 'everyman' applications. Both IE and Firefox have RSS subscription capabilities (albeit rather primitive support), as does Outlook 2007. And virtually every online portal website has the ability for users to subscribe to RSS feeds. Third-party offline blog readers are always going to be at the far end of the long tail, especially with the commodity-like status of RSS aggregators these days. I don't think third-party offline readers will every necessarily die off, but they will be used only by a select and small crowd of experienced computer enthusiasts who prefer them over more mainstream or online options for some very specific reasons. And, for most people, those benefits, whatever they may be, are not strong enough to outweight the cost of downloading the application, installing it, setting it up, and learning how to use it.
I'm curious - what do you use to consume blogs and other RSS feeds? Do you use a stand-alone program, or something that's integrated with Outlook? Do you use an online service?
These days, I use Google Reader to subscribe to and keep up to date with the myriad of blogs, news sites, sport sites, and online comics I follow. Google Reader gives me one spot - accessible anywhere in the world - where I can catch up on and manage my RSS subscriptions. Google Reader also has the early stages of social networking baked in. You can share particular blog items and see your friends' shared items. And Google Reader can offer recommendations on feeds you may like based on what feeds people with similar interests have subscribed to.