Google Reader is shutting down today, and we haven’t relaunched PhoneNews.com just yet. Here’s what you need to do.
I’ll keep this brief. This is technically my tenth anniversary in blogging. Today. It’s also the day Google Reader shuts down. It’s been quite a ride, and I’m not really blogging these days.
But, we’re continuing to invest in PhoneNews.com. We’re planning a content relaunch that will be rolling out later this month, followed up with a responsive look, feel, and forums later this year.
Still, today is symbolic because we’re losing a powerful, loved tool, Google Reader. It shuts down after today at midnight, so you need to act if you still use it… and thousands of people as of last month still use it to read PhoneNews.com.
Upcoming Newsletter
We are going to be rolling out a new email newsletter within the next 90 days, signups are back open. You can sign up at the box below.
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Get a New Feed Reader
Digg and AOL both have new feed readers as an alternative to Google Reader. Personally, we prefer NetNewsWire 3.3 on Mac (they are building a new 4.0 beta, but it’s not ready for prime time in our opinion).
Our feed url is – https://phone.news/feed/
Bottom line, you need to log in to Google Reader and export your feed list, and import it somewhere. It’s not clear if Google Takeout will still be able to access your feed list after today.
Also, if you use an older RSS client, like FeedDemon or NetNewsWire, you should disable Google Reader integration in its settings, so the app reverts back to solo mode. You will lose article syncing, we’re as dismayed about it as you are.
Social Media
We’re most prevalent on Twitter, you can follow us on @phonenewsdotcom – but we’re also going to improve our presence on our Facebook page and Google+ page too. Eventually, anyways… this is the first time we mentioned that we’ve even parked a Google+ page. As you can imagine, we’re not the biggest fans of social media around here… but we’ll work on that too.
Closing Thoughts
Since we’re in Google’s backyard with our main effort, our initial reaction is to pull punches on this one. We’re not happy Google Reader is being shut down. It became a monopoly, both as an API service for other RSS clients, and its clean code made it the best cloud feed reader out there. When you build a monopoly, you have a duty to those that become dependent on it. It’s something we keep in mind as we get bolder, and build better.
That said, while I’m handing the keys over to others to lead PhoneNews.com in the next ten years of wireless reporting, we don’t want to see you go. Please drop us in your new feed reader, sign up to get our newsletter, and stay tuned!
I will miss Google Reader very much and use it for PhoneNews.com, but unfortunately have not found a replacement that I am happy with. So I am giving up on feeds entirely for now (it was mostly junk anyway such as the Cheezburger networks). I’ve been a PhoneNews.com reader for several years now. I already have PhoneNews in my Twitter feed, and just now followed PhoneNews.com on Google+. I haven’t noticed much content on the Twitter feed however. Will we see article links posted on Twitter and Google+ so that users can keep up with the sites content?
Currently we post highlights and selected articles on Twitter, especially things like deal coverage where there’s a ticking clock on taking action. If we see a lot of Google Readers users switching to Twitter, we’ll expand how much we tweet there.
As to Facebook and Google+, we’ve resisted using cheap tools that just regurgitate every single article, but at the cost of not really doing much with either. Like many webmasters, we’ve hoped Google would offer a Google+ API, but it hasn’t materialized yet.
As to Facebook, we could be doing a better job there, and we aim to alongside a content relaunch coming soon.