Blog Hunting

Today I was hoping to link up with Laura Candler's Corkboard Connections Blog Hunt, but it seems that linky closed already [sadface].  Still, I want to share a little about what I'm using as my Google Reader alternative and why.


In my mind, this is a battle between BlogLovin' and Feedly.

BlogLovin'

I'll confess that I didn't move over to this platform initially. As soon as I caught wind a few months ago that Google Reader was dying, I quickly packed up and moved over to Feedly. With all of the recent push in the teacher-blogger community toward BlogLovin', however, I decided to give it another try.

What I like

As a blogger, there are a few features that I really like about BlogLovin'. 

1. Notifications and Blog Finding

I like that I can get notifications when new people start following me. I also like that when I click on those notifications, I can see what other blogs people are reading. I've stumbled upon some great new-to-me blogs that way over the past few days. 

2. Viewing actual blogs

Rather than seeing a stripped down version of someone's blog, I can see the actual website in a BlogLovin frame. This allows for easy commenting when I want to leave comments. It also lets me see how cute everyone's blog is these days.

What I dislike

1. Too many clicks

It seems like it takes forever to navigate sometimes, and I'm constantly clicking to mark things read, jump between blogs, and if I actually leave a comment on a blog, I lose my place in BlogLovin and have to start over with the remaining unread blogs. I subscribe to hundreds of blogs, so I have to be efficient when I'm looking at content. 

2. It's still buggy

I tried to go back and organize the blogs that I read into categories the other night, and I found that BlogLovin wasn't saving my organizational changes for blogs unless I categorized them as soon as I started following them. That was annoying. I also noticed that some blogs that I'm certain I was already following were showing up as unfollowed. Others were showing up multiple times in my reading list. I suspect that a lot of these bugs will improve -- I saw iPad updates for the app yesterday, so I know they're working on it, but I wish a lot of these features were already working better.

Feedly

Since I've been using this for a few months already, I'll openly confess that I'm a bit biased. It may also be the case that I've got this platform more figured out than BlogLovin, and some of the "advantages" of Feedly may exist in BlogLovin, too. But here's what I've found...

What I like

1. Better app integration

There are several different apps that I like to use when I'm reading blogs (and in this case, I'm talking about web-based apps, not iPad apps).

Pinterest - Feedly has Pinterest integration built in, so I can hover over an image and pin it straight from Feedly. The pin will link back to the original blog.

Buffer - Buffer is an app that I use to schedule Tweets so that they're spaced out throughout the day rather than sent all at once as I read blogs. If I read a blog post that I really like, I'll send it to Buffer to share with others.

IFTTT - If This Then That is an app that sets up certain actions based on commands that I give. For example, if I star an article that I like in Feedly, it will automatically send it to my Evernote notebook with tags that I set. There's a whole list of IFTTT recipes for Feedly here. 

Evernote - I can send items straight to my Evernote notebook from Feedly as one of the sharing options.

2. Easy navigation
There are lots of easy keyboard shortcuts to use to go through articles when I'm reading on my computer, and it's very easy to organize articles in categories. Even when I'm behind in my blog reading, I can get through it pretty quickly without feeling like I'm missing important content.

3. Marking articles
I know I can "heart" articles on BlogLovin, but I can mark articles on Feedly for later with specific tags that make them easier for me to find. For me, that's a better equivalent to starring articles on Google Reader, and I did that a lot.

What I dislike
1. Somethings get lost in translation
Sometimes the pictures don't get pulled into Feedly correctly (which might not be Feedly's fault), and I probably miss out on some cool content because of it.

2. Commenting is more complicated
I still have to click to go to the external link of the original blog post to comment or read comments. This is especially complicated when I'm using the iPhone or iPad apps. When I'm on a mobile device, I usually mark the article I want to comment on for later and check it out when I'm back to my computer.

And the winner is...Feedly, mostly

At least for now, I'm sticking with Feedly. I still like visiting BlogLovin' to find new blogs to follow, but my new strategy is to follow on BlogLovin', and then I add it to a list called "On My Feedly." Then I add the blog to one of my reading lists on Feedly. Then when I go into BlogLovin', I can immediately mark the "On My Feedly" list as read because I'll know I've seen it all on Feedly. There are a bunch of new blogs that I started following as I was trying out BlogLovin' that aren't on my Feedly list yet, so that will be a process to move those over. It's not a perfect system, but I expected some growing pains in the transition. 

I'm going to continue to use BlogLovin to discover new blogs because that's a huge benefit in my mind.

Where did you land in the Google Reader alternative battle? I'd love to hear what you chose and why in the comments section!