With Google Reader now just two weeks away from being smothered with a virtual pillow by the powers that be at the world's biggest media company, Digg may be coming to the rescue with an alternative.
Social Media site Digg says it has a five-person development team working on a 'freemium' alternative (meaning presumably that it will ultimately have some paid-for elements).
The new reader is due to launch on 26 June and will, Digg says, offer the following:
- Easy migration and onboarding from Google Reader.
- A clean reading experience that gets out of the way and puts the focus squarely on the articles, posts, images, and videos themselves.
- Useful mobile apps that sync with the web experience.
- Support for key actions like subscribing, sharing, saving and organizing.
It sounds perfect, so lets hope it works. As Jon Bernstein noted a few months ago, Google Reader is – for many journalists – Google's most useful tool.
For many, Twitter has replaced the RSS reader. And it is certainly true that Twitter is a much better place to go for breaking news because it disseminates stories before they have been turned into polished prose.
But RSS readers remain for many – myself included – an essential way to keep tabs on the news agenda.
So far I have yet to find a replacement for Google Reader which is anything like as good. Feedly and Flipboard are the two sites which seem to be most widely cited as Google Reader replacements but I find both over-designed and cumbersome compared with the streamlined effortless efficiency of Google Reader (which I mainly use as a widget which sits on my phone).
Here's hoping that Digg's new service fits the bill. In the mean time, can anyone recommend another Google Reader replacement which is as simple and effective as the original?
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