Google Reader is a service that has a large following of users that depend upon it to keep them up-to-date on their favorite websites and blogs — for many years now. Google just announced the death of Google Reader effective July 1, 2013. If you are an avid user, now what?
Fortunately, there are many solutions.
Approach #1
For all of the sites which feed into your Google Reader account, just subscribe to receive their updates by email. Most offer such an email option. It’s easy and you can unsubscribe at any future point.
For example, if you receive this Emerge2 Blog via Google Reader, here’s our email subscription form to receive new blog posts in your inbox.
Approach #2
Use the Google Takeout utility to extract your Google Reader subscriptions into an export file so you can import them into an alternate RSS reader tool.
There are many other RSS reader tools available. For example, Feedly is often suggested and they already have a list of tips for migrating from Google Reader to Feedly.
In addition, Marketing Land has created a post of 12 Google Reader Alternatives and Buffer has created the “Top 5 Google Reader Alternatives that work with Buffer“.
There are many other such lists of alternative RSS readers. In other words, you have options.
And, if you wish to receive the Emerge2 Blog via an RSS reader, here’s the feed’s URL: http://blog.emerge2.com/feed
Closing
Unfortunately in the ever-changing world of technology and online services, things are always changing. The closing of the Google Reader service is sadly just another example of this.
The ball is now in your court: Select your approach, make the changes, and move on. You can do it — Do it now!
(PS: Thanks to copyblogger for the idea for this article.)
