Google Reader's Demise

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By now I'm sure most folks have heard that Google will but shutting down its Google Reader system on July 1, 2013. If you are interested in that sort of thing, here is one piece of analysis concerning this move that I thought was interesting.

"But wait, why are you talking about this on DET, the theoblog known for its dry, boring, but none-the-less incredibly stimulating theological fare?"

I know in my spirit that some of you, dear readers, are reasoning thusly in your hearts. The answer is because DET has always had a substantial Google Reader subscribers list. From very early on I made it a priority to ensure that the DET rss feed publishes the full text of posts here, rather than just a teaser that requires you to click through for the content. My own feeling is that I care less about you coming to my site (which is more important for people who have aggressively monetized, anyway) than I care about making the content available to you in as easy a manner possible. At the same time, I would hate to lose contact with that deep rss subscriber base once Google Reader shuts down.

Never fear, I hear you - gentle readers - crying out as did the crowds after Peter's Pentecost sermon: "But what should we do?!?!"

My solution has been to switch over to The Old Reader, and rss subscription system patterned on an older version of Google Reader that was a bit more versatile than the one we have for a little while longer. I'm still getting the feel for it, but I was able to export my subscription list from Google Reader (even if it a little more complicated than it really had to be, and I had to wait a while in the queue on the The Old Reader side as they are doing quite a bit of importing these days...) and am now happily reading away. But if you want more options, I would direct you to this handy list of options (The Old Reader tops the list, just FYI). Of course, you can always use the buttons at the end of this post to keep track of DET by subscribing to my Twitter stream or the DET Facebook page.

So I hope that you will be proactive and that you'll keep on reading here at DET even after July 1st!

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Comments

Kevin Davis said…
Feedly tops the poll taken by lifehacker in that article. I've been using Feedly for a couple weeks now, and it is very well done. It's most notable feature is the ability to do four different lay-out styles (title only, magazine view, cards view, and full article). Though, I'm gonna try Old Reader, just to see if there's some minor things from Google Reader that I'll miss.
April 10, 2013 3:30 PM
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