Don’t mourn Google Reader, discover a new favourite feed

If you have ever had any social media training, you may well have got used to a free Google tool called Google Reader as a way of tracking the websites you need to visit regularly. And if you have never discovered it, or any other RSS reader, read on anyway.

Twitter and techie blogs have been full of the news that Google has announced the imminent death of Google Reader. Some people are very upset, and an e-petition has already collected 100,000 signatures. Some can’t conceive of life without Google Reader, while others have shrugged their shoulders or even said 'good riddance'.

I have to say the news didn’t strike me as too bad because I settled on Netvibes a while ago. It has all the advantages of a good RSS reader, in that it delivers updates to the web pages you follow to one easily organised site under your control.

For a newsroom, however, it has the added advantage that you can share tabs (groups of feeds) with fellow users of Netvibes. So, for example, you might have a group of feeds for all the local government or NHS sites that you check regularly. With Netvibes you can email a link to the tab to a colleague who needs the same feeds - no need to have them set it all up from scratch.

If you haven’t been in the habit of using RSS feeds and you spend a lot of your time checking for news and updates from the same web pages regularly, you could save a huge amount of time by setting up an RSS reader. There are lots. For instance, this list popped up on Reddit:

http://www.feedly.com/

http://theoldreader.com/

http://www.feedafever.com/

http://www.bloglines.com/

http://www.rssowl.org/.

And there are many, many more. By the way, for the uninitiated RSS means Really Simple Syndication and you can read a useful intro to the whole subject on Wikipedia.

One useful thing has come out of the flurry of anger and panic generated by Google’s announcement: a reminder not to get too hooked on any one free tool such as Google Reader. But when they are taken away there’s no need to panic - there are usually dozens, even hundreds, more free tools waiting to become your new favourite.

Social media: RSS readers and feeds

Social media newsgathering

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