Bloglines Has Lost its Way
Gina Trapani at Lifehacker loves the new Google Reader and I gotta tell you, I do too. I find I am able to whiz through feeds far faster with G-Reader than I am with any other RSS interface, including desktop apps. It's even encouraging me to add more feeds rather than deleting them because its so darn efficient. If you haven't given the Google Reader a try, do so. Gina's even dumped Bloglines for it.
Speaking of Bloglines, they're toast. First, Bloglines daddy Mark Fletcher left months ago. Worse, Bloglines' new owner, Ask, has done diddly squat with it since they acquired it over a year and half ago. Third, The River of News model is going to become the dominate way people consume content that's updated frequently. The Google Reader is the only online aggregator I have seen to really embrace this metaphor in its truest form. Bloglines doesn't. Lastly, OPML makes it very easy to move from one reader to another. There's no lock in.
Now, I am not saying that Google has the reader spaced locked up. Hardly. I wouldn't count out Yahoo or Microsoft (an Edelman client) by any stretch of the imagination. And Newsgator is dominating the enterprise RSS market. But it seems to me that Bloglines has lost its way. They need a huge upgrade to catch up to Google, and soon, others. The pressure is on for Ask.
