What comes after Google Reader? (besides weeping)

Last updated on: June 30, 2013 at 10:08 pm by Leah Libresco

What comes after Google Reader? (besides weeping) 2013-06-30T22:08:08-04:00 Leah Libresco

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Sing a dirge today for Google Reader. Tomorrow, it passes out of existence.

I’ve decided to switch to Feedly, which has an easy one-step import for Google Reader users. Their interface is nice enough, as is the app, but it was their import that won my heart, because it also pulled in my tags! I’ve been using Google Reader as a filing system for a while, and now I’ll be able to keep saving my clippings into categories that include:

Cyberwar
Drones
Epidemics
Football
Human Flesh (as in Rénròu Sōusuǒ, this isn’t my anti-gnosticisim folder — that would be ‘recipes’)
Mary Mallon
Thesis
Transhumanism
Woot

I’ve signed up with Hive, too, since it enables sharing, and I plan to use it only to read items shared by friends and to share pieces I’ve found, but right now it’s too buggy for my full time reading. I’m sad no one has fully replicated the old, social Google Reader, since it was the only content-oriented social site I belonged to.

While other sites, like twitter and facebook, let you share links, Google Reader-that-was had you share full text, and prioritized comments. This made it feel a lot like a French salon, or a book club where people actually read the books. Instead of keeping up with friends photos and status updates, I was plugged into their readings and reaction, and it was easy to be drawn in. We’ve kludged together alternate ways to share, but I still miss our hivemind.

I always prefer to get to know people through their hobbyhorses. In The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis writes:

Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, “What? You too? I thought I was the only one.”
… It is when two such persons discover one another, when, whether with immense difficulties and semi-articulate fumblings or with what would seem to us amazing and elliptical speed, they share their vision – it is then that Friendship is born.

This happens less often without an easy way to invite people into my thoughts. After all, few of my friends blog, and, now that I’ve graduated from college, I don’t get to hear them weave interests into anecdotes meant to illustrate their philosophy twice a week. Thank heavens I am prone to propose bookclub/fights, and have friends (and a beau) who accept.

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