After to coming to terms with the need to move my monster list of feeds from Bloglines, evaluating Google Reader, NetVibes and various other feed readers, weeding dead or no longer relevant feeds (really needed to be done even if I didn’t move feed readers), and finally getting used and somewhat enjoying NetVibes, I got an email from MerchantCircle informing me that Bloglines will not die.
The email came November 30th but MerchantCircle’s press release is dated November 4th. According to the press release MerchantCircle will assume management of Bloglines and beginning December 1st (today) will offer “richer, more local Bloglines experience for existing and future users.” Of course it also says on December 1st go to www.bloglines.com for more information. However, people who do that are just redirected to MerchantCircle which repeats a lot of the same information and links to the MerchantCircle blog post telling people that “beginning around December 1st, when you log in to your Bloglines account (using your same id and password), you’ll be transitioned to the NEW Bloglines experience.”
I logged in and I guess they will be going with the “around” December 1st date because to me it looks like the same old Bloglines.
By now I am guessing many avid Bloglines users have already moved their feeds to another reader. I am interested to see what the new Bloglines will be and what enhancements will be made, however I have to say that I really like NetVibes social monitoring interactive features that Bloglines just didn’t have. I am also a little concerned about the lack of coordination with the press releases, email notice, the jumping from site to site to read “more” about it, and the nebulous launch date of the new version. MerchantCircle hasn’t mentioned any specific feature updates, so it will be interesting if their new version will be able to woo many departed users who found replacement readers back to the Bloglines product.
I used to like the Bloglines beta, so I was hoping this would mean it would return. Except it’s not accessible at all.
MerchantCircle just posted a video of the “new” Bloglines, and it looks like the Netvibes reader view with a different skin.
http://blog.merchantcircle.com/2010/11/sneak-peak-into-new-bloglines.html
Maybe it’s best to stick with Netvibes after all! 🙂
I really really liked Bloglines. The reason I think it is important that they woo departed users is they need to make sure they have a large group of users for it to be worth keeping down the road.
I don’t want to come back to Bloglines only to be looking for another reader next year or 2 years from now.
I know there are some of us who don’t much care whether Bloglines “woos many departed users who found replacement readers” that those users are happy with. We’re just–I’m just–delighted that it hasn’t gone away (actually announced a couple of weeks ago) for those of us who really, truly didn’t like the replacements.