Bloglines, the grandfather of web based RSS readers, launched a new beta site this evening at beta.bloglines.com. Like everyone else these days, the most notable new feature is an Ajax customizable home page where users can drag and reorder feeds for a quick view.
Bloglines now has three viewing options - quick view (the new Ajax drag and drop view in the image to the left), three pane “Outlook-like” view and the classic full view with two panes. The site is also trying to manage unread feeds more intelligently, a common user complaint in the past.
The company says more changes are coming. Options for saving, sending and sharing stories, tools for building link blogs, managing blog rolls, etc. are all on the way. In the meantime, the classic bloglines site will remain available at bloglines.com. Feeds remain synced between the two sites.
Product iterations come very slowly at Bloglines, which was acquired by Ask.com in early 2005. The last major news from them was the integration of blog search over a year ago. Meanwhile, Google Reader has quickly grabbed the attention of the early adopter crowd, and is by far the most popular feed reader used by our readers according to Feedburner stats.
Richard MacManus has a much longer review of the product at Read/Write Web.
How is it going to compete with Google Reader? Best of luck though.
It is obviously they should speed up product iterations to catch up with Netvibes, Pageflakes, and the likes.
Have you finally stopped linking to crunchbase? Someone seems to be listening to his readers. GJ
I’m kinda disappointed..
I use Bloglines as my main RSS reader. To make it easy on me, I’ve created smaller RSS playlists which can’t be found in the new Beta…
Hmm.. come to think about it, the playlist tab in the old format is the start page in the new one..
http://www.flickr.com/photos/orliy1/1246782234/
But I don’t get why I need to create it all over again.
It looks like Bloglines is back in the game. I’m not sure it’s enough to get me back, but it should hold quite a few more who’ve considered jumping to Google Reader.
I am not sure if this new look alone will help Bloglines in getting back at Google. Also, as Orli mentioned, it has not kept the existing users happy too. So, who was this makeover targeted at, then?
I have been using Bloglines since the beginning, I see no need to change anything, the good point about Bloglines is the simple layout and ease of use. For my home browser homepage I use Yahoo Bookmarks.
“I’m kinda disappointed..
I use Bloglines as my main RSS reader. To make it easy on me, I’ve created smaller RSS playlists which can’t be found in the new Beta…”
Can someone verify this?. I also currently use bloglines, and HAVE to have this.
I think its not as readable as the old design. Apart from that i like it.
In case of bloglines and new features - the most important to me actually was the one with not reloading the whole pane when you would mark one item as unread. And the fact that it has been stable for a longer time.
Before, when Bloglines was usually the major reader in my subscribers, they did not really evolve. Now with Google having them kicked out as leading reader at least in all blogs I have statistic insight, they move.
Recently having run two different readers for different purposes, I noticed that I missed some of the described features from Bloglines as share and mail (where reader is stronger),
But quite frankly, I am already happy about the uptime. The one thing I would love to see in Google Reader btw that I am hypersurprised not to be in there but has been in Bloglines forever? Search.
Put some space between expanded posts. Just like Google Reader. Its good on eyes…
In case anyone is interested, I created a video review:
http://www.centernetworks.com/.....lines-beta
very disappointing. Netvibe still destroys all competition.
This is a massive improvement over the old version, and way better than Newsgator Online (which is lame - I find it slow and clunky). Only reason I’m going to keep using Newsgator is because of Newsgator Go, which allows me to sync my Windows Mobile device and then read feeds without being online. Kudos to Bloglines though. It was slow coming, but this is definitely a big step forward.
I like the updated interface, the 3 new viewsand the promise of a fully working drag-and-drop functionality.
However, the beta as is right now is unusable for existing users. Many features like “Keep New”, rename folder, linking to original site from title and general options and settings are not available for the new UI.
I’m happy to see changes are coming.