Reader’s heir apparent

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Google’s e-graveyard contains a long list of innovative products — some of which were iconic, and the rest that never took off — whose plug was pulled due to a variety of reasons. Last week, when the company retired its Reader, which falls under the iconic application category, fans were no doubt disheartened, but thanks to Google’s early announcement, they had also moved on to find replacements for the Reader.

Though some of them come close to the retired product, fans are likely to strongly contend that ‘alternatives’ would suit better than the word ‘replacements’.
In the wake of Reader’s shutdown, here’s a list of the top five alternatives that can try and fill up the void felt by around 40 to 50 million of the Internet’s most voracious news readers such as bloggers, journalists, tech-savvy professionals, researchers and more.

5. Netvibes
NetVibes, a customisable RSS feed reader, is packed with features such as multiple tabs that let you arrange your feeds into separate topics and an organiser. Although the interface can get a little messy when you have too many feeds, the programme’s speed is an impressive feature.

4. The Old Reader
The Old Reader (TOR) was built when Google Reader originally shut down its social features and revamped its Reader a couple of years ago. TOR includes social sharing features, letting you follow other users and find out what they are looking at, and aims to be what Google Reader used to be: A simple, web-based RSS reader with lots of great sharing features.

3. Newsblur
NewsBlur, a web-based feed reader that looks somewhat like a desktop reader, helps create categories and tags that highlight the stories a user wants most, and even create a ‘Blurblog’ of favourite stories. NewsBlur however is free only up to 64 sites. Newsbur might be a bit messy, but the ton of options, keyboard shortcuts and a recommendations feature draw people to it.

2. Digg
Digg’s reader is the newest kid on the block. It takes the familiar Google Reader interface, albeit cleaned up a bit, and has added a few new features like Instapaper sharing, Digg integration, and a ‘Popular’ filter that shows you which articles in your feeds are trending right now. The reader is young but looks solid!

1. Feedly
Feedly, which works for iOS, Android and Web platforms, is by far the most popular Google Reader alternative. It has a neat, beautiful interface that a user can tweak to work on almost exactly like Google Reader. In addition to that, it offers a lot of other views too - a newspaper-like interface or an image-centric view are some of them. Ever since Google Reader’s death announcement, they’ve been adding tons of new features too. Feedly is definitely the heir apparent to Google Reader’s crown.