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I gave Google Reader a shot when it first came out, and I wasn’t all that impressed. But people I respect have been complaining that Bloglines is sometimes tardy in updating some feeds (and I’ve noticed it myself) and singing Google Reader’s praises. So, I decided to give it another shot.

I’m still not all that impressed.

I like the way Google Reader keeps posts, so that you can go back and reread something, as opposed to Bloglines’ “read it and it’s gone” method. But I hate that you have to scroll past a new post or actually mark it as read for it to stop showing up on your feeds list as unread. Google Reader’s feed categories are actually tags, and you can give feeds or individual posts multiple tags, which is great–in theory. In practice, I’ve found that I don’t want my feeds in multiple places. I want a feed in one category so that I know where to find it. That’s why I’ve put my feeds in categories in the first place, to make them easier to find, not to get confused when they show up in two of three different places. I like how you can share posts and make them public on Google Reader, but I can’t publish my blogroll like I can with Bloglines. And I can’t see how many people have subscribed to a feed, which is one of the things I love about Bloglines (for very vain reasons).

But most importantly, my feeds on Google Reader weren’t updating any faster or more currently than on Bloglines. Some feeds weren’t updating at all on Google Reader, but were on Bloglines.

Sorry, Google, but you’ve lost me in this round. Bloglines is far from perfect, but it’s also awfully far from “so FUBARed I need to drop it like a rotten egg.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 21st, 2007 at 10:05 am and is filed under social software, tech, web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.