For the last day or so I have been experimenting with Google Reader, seeing how it treats RSS feeds. RSS is a wonderful way to keep up with everything that’s happening out in the blogosphere, and in the Internet as a whole - I can’t imagine life before it.
I prefer web-based RSS readers, because I use my computer at home as much as my computer at work, and because at work I use a minimum of three different computers every week. Web-based means I don’t have to worry about synchronising my reader - I can pick up where I left off, wherever I am. I haven’t been using RSS for that long, and my current, and until now preferred, reader has been Bloglines. Until now, you ask?
Well, I’m not sure I can say that Google Reader has ousted Bloglines from its pedestal just yet, but the little experiment I’ve been conducting has made me wonder whether or not I should be using other tools for my subscriptions. For the past couple of weeks or so I’ve been wondering about certain feeds and whether updates were being displayed in a timely manner in Bloglines. Some usually frequently updated sites were not updating in Bloglines. Some feeds seemed to have “stalled” in Bloglines, with no new updates after a particular date. This blog was a case in point - the problem seems to have fixed itself now: Bloglines is updating again - but for almost a week there, new posts weren’t appearing. Sage, the RSS reader I use as a tester with Firefox, was displaying updates, so I didn’t think it was a problem with Blogger Beta…
The experiment has been very very simple. I imported my Bloglines subscriptions into Google Reader and just observed which feeds were updating in both readers. I can report that for some feeds, Google Reader seems to be much faster than Bloglines when it comes to displaying updates.
For instance, using Google Reader, I read, at around 1pm yesterday, that Kathryn is going to have some explaining to do (the Yellow Wiggle’s retired). I didn’t notice this update in Bloglines until that evening (8:38pm).
Also, at around that time yesterday evening Google Reader displayed an update of Ponderance. Ponderance is a Blogger blog - is this an issue? This morning, Bloglines still hasn’t registered any updates.
Julie Leung finally blogged after a long silence yesterday (I’m pleased, I enjoy Julie’s writing)! This, again, was brought to me by Google Reader last night. Bloglines only registered the update this morning…
Other feeds that are displaying updates in Google Reader this morning (but not in Bloglines): Ampersand Duck, Justine Larbalestier, Two Peas, No Pod (two new posts I think), Mooiness, Pegasus Librarian… I’m not going to list them all, but you get the picture. (Some feeds seem to be updating at roughly the same times in both readers, of course. Bloglines is not universally slower than Google Reader.)
I’m not sure what this means. Am I just being picky?
Update 7:48am: This post has just appeared in Google Reader, timestamped 7:33am. Nothing in Bloglines as yet. I’m not sure how long I’ll maintain this experiment (it’s kind of doing my head in to have to monitor not one, but two readers) - we’ll see.
