This is embarrassing. As an early adopter of RSS both as a reader and a publisher, I lost interest in keeping up with my RSS subscriptions years ago. I still keep Google Reader ‘stocked’ and promise myself to read it regularly but the reality is, if I drop in there once every 6 months, I’m doing good. As a result, this is what I often see when logged in.
When I got an Android phone, one of the first apps I installed was the Google Reader app. I thought it would solve my problem but alas it did not. I found myself opening the Kindle app more than any other. I’d almost given up hope of ever reading RSS feeds again until the day I decided to check out some Chrome Extensions and found Feedly.
How can you possibly believe an app can change your reading preferences? I scolded myself. But try it I did. I can’t explain it, but I’m reading my feeds again! Not only am I reading I look forward to reading them every chance I get.
At first I thought perhaps it’s the way Feedly displays the articles. In an attractive manner that I can quickly scan the headlines and snippets – much like a digital newspaper instead of a huge mass of unreads that look too much like email (yuck). Maybe the association with email caused an instant shut down in my brain who knows.
One feature that I love is I don’t have to open a new tab to visit the site in question. Among the most annoying things are publishers setting the RSS feed to excerpt only. That forces me to go to their site to read. This really sucks on a mobile device. Even on a desktop I don’t like it.
With Feedly, you can preview the entire article without leaving. Yeah maybe it is that. I don’t really know but either way I’m learning to enjoy my feeds, discovering new tips, tricks, keeping up with what my friends are doing online all over again. Hopefully this will continue.
I now have Feedly installed on the phone, Firefox and Chrome and it is free. It does look like there could be a premium upgrade in the horizon though. In the mean time, I’m happy to enjoy great content once again.
