A question for you all…
How Do You Read And Follow Your Favourite Blogs?
As I’m sure you know already, Google Reader is closing 1st July 2013 and I have to admit I have no idea what effect this will have on my blog followers who use reader to follow my blog posts.
I also have to admit that I stopped using Google Reader ages ago as it just became too overwhelming when I had over 1000 new posts to go through every time I logged on! Yes I know, I just follow too many people!
So I’m looking for a new way of following the blogosphere and as more and more of us turn to the bite-sized formats for getting our ‘news’ I’ve tried things like Pulse, which you can get to follow specific blogs, and Flipboard, where you can save sites and pages you want to read later. Of course there is always Facebook and Twitter but I’m not on them all the time and it is easy to miss a post from a favourite blog.
To be honest my favourite way, and so far most reliable way, is to follow my regular reads by email, I just have to remember not to follow too many blogs as my inbox will become too full and I’ll be back to square one again. Also not all blog owners have set up a ‘follow my blog by email’ feed so it isn’t always an option. It is easy to do by the way, there is a widget you can add to your sidebar in the Layout tab – go do it!
I would love to know what your favourite tricks for reading and following blogs are and in the meantime if you do follow my blog by Google Reader and want to keep following it then please do remember to add me to your new method. Or you can try following me by email, just add your email address to the ‘Follow By Email’ box in my sidebar and remember to activate your subscription when you get the email (check your spam just in case).
Or you can follow me via BlogLovin’ and I’ve set up an easy link in my sidebar for this as well.
Looking forward to hearing how you follow your favourite blogs!
Catch you later.
Kim
Don’t forget my Cricut giveaway!
The first question is: how do you surf the net? Do you use IE, Firefox, or Chrome or who?
I use Google Chrome. It sits in well with my Google+ and Blogger profiles/usage. As soon as Google announced reader was finishing I:
1 – celebrated the ending of an unmanageable utility!
2 – joined the Chrome RSS feeder. That now sits up on my toolbar telling me when I have new posts to read. Adding/subtracting feeds is a one click option.
You can still follow a person's blog from their page but why bother? I now rely solely on the RSS Feed Reader as it keeps my Inbox less crowded and no more feeds I can't shed – Google Reader won't listen to No!
Hi Kim, Great question. At the moment I use e-mail and bloglovin, but I still use my Blog list on a daily basis. I will be interested to hear what others are doing though. I bought the current Papercraft essentials this morning, thanks to your reminder. I love your paperclips article and look forward to reading it later. Enjoy your Day. Hugs Rita xxx
This is an important topic. As crafters, we depend on our audience and with Google Reader hopping off the wagon, we can potentially lose our audience. I have tried Bloglovin', which I think is the best alternative to Google Friend Connect. To read my feeds, however, I prefer Feedly. Feedly works on all platforms and not only does it look cool, but it has some easy functionality that Reader sorely missed. 🙂
So glad you brought this up Kim!
I have started to use Bloglovin Kim I like the fact that I get one email every day with the new posts on and its easy to work through them one at a time 🙂
I am not on facebook etc. so that's a none starter for me anyway.
Great Topic xx
Hugs Mau xx
Hey Kim, I'm another Feedly user. It works great for me since I have all my feeds categorized…if it gets too full I mark the fashion/food categories as read so that it just leaves me with crafty blogs:) I follow way too many blogs but i.love.it.
HI Kim, because I am on Blogger I use the Reading List on the dashboard which apparently isn't disappearing,so I shouldn't have any interruptions to the way I keep a check on all the blogs I follow.
Good question though and I am interested in what other people are using and liking.
hugs {brenda} x0x
Am so hoping Brenda is right… but as I understood it, the Blogger Dashboard Reading List is "fed" by Google Reader, so won't be updated any longer once GR goes – and that makes me very unhappy, as that's where I have always done my reading from… Love having it all in one place – composing my own posts and catching up with other people's.
Am exploring Bloglovin' and Feedly and so far not happy with either… There are quite a few blogs I follow by email, but no way can I have all the ones I follow coming in that way – as you say, the inbox would be overflowing!
No satisfactory solution as far as I'm concerned yet…
Alison x
I am totally confused as to whether my blog reading list will disappear or not but I have signed up for Bloglovin' in case.
Hi Kim. Firstly, thanks for your comments on my blog. Im very new to this blogging mularky so I wasn't aware of this or what effect it may have.
I personally only follow blogs by becoming a follower and not by email. I then just look at my reading list when Im in Blogger or 9 times out of 10 Im surfing on my phone and I have the blogs I look at bookmarked.
I suppose its not too bad for me currently as I don't yet follow loads of blogs but I certainly wouldn't want a deluge of emails so wouldn't go down that route.
Ang x
Hi, Kim!
I am using Bloglovin, I also follow some blogs by email, not many… I like bloglovin, it´s quite similar to the list I was used to with blogger dashboard.
I set up the email thing in my sideboard long ago but I don´t have any reader through that one.
I am following a lot of blogs by e-mail, not really happy with that, because you have to click on the link to go the net to see it, and I use Feedly. I agree with Alison(butterfly), I am not satisfied with it, some features I miss, really. So I read them by Google Reader again, until it dies, and hope to find another reader in the meantime.
hi kim.i am just using my blogger dashboard,i have researched and researched and looked on endless posts on the blogger forum and they all say that the google reader will not effect my dashboard list as they are ones I follow via friends connect?
no doubt if they are wrong, I`ll soon find out.lol.
xx coops xx
Hi Kim, I think as several others have said, it's supposed to be only non blogger blogs that are affected, I have blog lovin and networked blogs as well just in case, that said I always prioritize returning comments to people who have commented on mine and I don't get as much time as I would like to actually browse the feeds lol
Lindsay xx
Hello Kim!!
I was started with Bloglovin but I found Feedly which is sooooo simple!!!
I love it. I don't know if you've tried, but just only sign up with Google account and you can import all your favorites blogs. For add a new one, just click on the search field, put the name of the blog and click the PLUS sign for add it to your favorites.
For me, it was so easy to use this reader instead of Bloglovin. I just hate it now! LOL!
Regards from Spain
Lourdes
I use Bloglovin'. My blog isn't on Blogger in any case, although i do have a Google account and have followed many blogs via Friends Connect but I wasn't able to put a button on for that onto my blog because it wasn't on their service, so I looked around and went for Bloglovin' I've actually found it much easier to use than the way that everything ran away from me on Google Reader. I've even split out blogs into groups – challenge blogs, company blogs, blogs of those who regularly comment on my blog (so that I can be sure to return the visit when they've got a new post), then there's the blogs I quite like looking at but the writers have never commented on mine. When I've had periods when I've not been online and lots of those I follow have written posts I priorotise which blogs I visit, finishing with the non-commentors last if I've got the time, otherwise I just mark them all as read and forget about visiting them until I've got time.
I just use the blogger dashboard. I don't like blog lovin as without signing yourself up you have no idea who is following or how many.
Another vote for Feedly here – it works fine on my 7 inch Android tablet as well as my Windows PC via the web browser (Chrome).
When I heard Google Reader/GFC was ending I signed up for both Feedly and Bloglovin so I could take them both for a test drive and compare. I find Bloglovin easiest to use and it imported all my GR blogs in just seconds. I have all my blogs sorted into categories, which I prefer, and I can add new blogs to a category each time I follow a new blog. And I get an email each day with all the blog updates from the day–so I can read them there, or go to Bloglovin's site if I prefer. They also have an iPad app, which I keep wanting to download and haven't gotten around to it. 🙂
Feedly is nice, but to me it the only extra benefit with it is that you can customize its colors etc, which I just don't care about. It's a bit more like a flashy (for lack of a better word). I just want to read all my blogs in one place in the easiest way possible. And Bloglovin does that for me.
I've swapped to Feedly which is fine, but I miss the reader toolbar app I had which let me read a post from whatever page I happened to be on when I saw there was a new one, or when I wanted to read my blog feed with half an eye on something else (FB newsfeed, music video etc). Like most people I follow too many blogs for comfort, if I gi without reading then there will be about 250 back posts in around 5 days so I am never quite on top of it. With all these readers I also find I still have to go to the blog to actually comment. I was reading in feedly this morning and opened about 10 tabs for posts like this one to comment on.