500K Google Reader Users Convert to Feedly

I’m sure the folks over at Feedly always dreamed of picking up new users, but never thought they would be picking up 500K in just two days. Even under the strain, Feedly is soldiering on, keeping up with the new load by increasing server capacity by ten fold. Maybe when the dust settles, Feedly and other services will send Google a thank-you-note for killing its Google Reader service.

Importing your Google Reader feed into Feedly is very painless. All you have to do is sign into your Google Account and Feedly will automatically sync your Reader’s feeds.

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Truth be told, I did not convert to Feedly, but I added it to Reader, just as I have also been trying out Newsburn and TheOldReader on their own Firefox pinned tabs for a couple of days now.
Which really makes me regret the day when Reader will disappear, because these really crappy feed readers do not compare by miles to the rock-solid and frequently updated Reader. Reader worked so well and according to what you intuitively expected from a feed reader that you didn't even notice how essential it was to your daily life until you had to try these other services.

Feedly does not for instance show a list of your feeds, which might be fine if it were optional, so that you could hide the list after the transitional period when you trust the service. It also tries to build a "homepage" of my feeds, with an almost insulting message when there is no new feeds (I keep mine read) and fancy names for that homepage, like "Weekend Edition", really? It also has ads, but they're not too intrusive, although I hope they're not visible from a mobile phone, as they still take up some space needed for reading the feeds.

Newsblur has an interface that's working weirdly, with a cursor that indicates lines that don't exist, a 2-pane right screen for no reason, but mostly a refresh rate that works only if you read feeds once a day.

TheOldReader is plain crap, it does not import your Reader feeds or an OPML file, and you can't even rename your feeds. They say it was created to restore some features Reader cancelled out, but obviously Reader has evolved so much in the mean time and TheOldReader none at all, that it's TheOldReader that is now missing several features. Like, all of them!

Hopefully some of these feed readers or new ones will emerge with improved features as Reader retires, unless Google thinks twice about losing millions of customers (half a million already gone to one single competitor 2 days after Google's announcement to retire, with still over 3 months to go before its actual retirement date) by monetizing Reader instead of giving up on it. Shame on you, Google. What's the Chromebook worth now, without Reader?

"Very painless"

I didn't know there were levels of feeling no pain. Made me cringe. ugh.

There's a difference between "convert" and "news sites touting feedly's announcement that transferring over is easy, people do this, and then never use it again because feedly blows"

I am just staying patient until June, I am sure somebody out there is hard at work on an amazing replacement for Google Reader. Of course there is hope they Google also delays or just decides to keep it up and running.

This is really pretty shitty of Google to do under their "do no evil" phrase. They created GReader, made it awesome, ran all the other guys off the web (Bloglines etc.) then cut it off when they get bored with it. What happens when they get bored w/ our Voice, Email, Calander, or Drive.

Welcome to the Cloud folks.

Now all they need to do is steal the Google Reader UI to keep them.

And yes I've seen the "make it more like Google Reader guide". Not good enough to get me to stay.

Google Reader was great......will there be another like it? No comment.

Count me in the group, saw an article on ars about reader going down, viewed the poll at ars about what is recommended. Feedly won.

Never heard of it before this event, but i will switch to feedly before june.

God I'm going to miss Google Reader.

I've tried switching over to Twitter creating an account and subscribing to my feeds there, which seems to work alright, but just doesn't have the same feel as ol' Google Reader.

reminds me of the South Park episode with Kip.