March 15, 2006

I Dumped Google Reader

I began using Google Reader as my main feed reader shortly after it was released. I really wanted to like it, but after several months I found myself continually annoyed with the interface. Last week I dumped it.

I’m probably not the average user since I read over 100 feeds. The Google Reader interface seems to be built for someone with a handful feeds who wants to read every single item. Here are a few of my observations:

• The interface gives no useful indication of the number of unread items (it says “Item 1 of more than 20” even when it actually means “more than 300”)
• There is no way to mark all items as read without scrolling through each item. It’s easy to get overwhelmed if you miss a day or two.
• Although you can tag feeds, doing so is tedious. I find folders to be “good enough” for feeds.*
• Some feeds didn’t seem to update in a timely fashion, and there was no indication when a feed went “dead”
• I find it much faster to scan a long page with many items than to view each item individually. Google Reader is a good interface for reading individual items, but as we know web users don’t read, they scan.
• Sluggish performance in Safari (not so much of a problem thanks to my new friend Camino)

I’ve moved my subscriptions back to Bloglines.