Bad news greeted me this afternoon when I opened up Bloglines this afternoon. Sad news. The passing of an era:
“September 10, 2010
Bloglines Update
Today, Ask.com let our users know that we will shut down Bloglines on October 1. Not an easy decision, especially considering our loyal and supportive (not to mention patient) user base, but, ultimately, the right one given business reasons simply too hard to ignore.” (ASK.com Official Blog – Bloglines Update)
It seems that ASK.com thinks that Twitter and Facebook are going to be the dominant method of conveying information for the foreseeable future, that RSS and blogs are a passe method of conveying information ... and by extension, anything worth saying can be said in 140 characters or less.
So now I have to find a new feed reader program (ed.: Done – Great News is an offline reader that will import ALL of your Bloglines feeds and allows you to read on or offline) and watch all the blogs in the world close their doors or admit they are antiquated. Yes, another sign that I am 'over the hill and twice as moldy'.
Are you ready for the coming apocalypse of the blogverse? Friend ShellyS tweeted her discovery of the news on one of her blogging blogs. She cites the loss of her Blog Roll as one of the major downsides for her. I hadn't even thought of it. Maintaining a blog roll is a royal pain in the ass, one I learned first hand when using the AOL Journals editor. There's no way I am going back to a line-by-line blog roll. No Sireee. Not me. Guess the blog roll is a goner, too. Then again, the coming demise of the blogverse will simply be hastened when no one can find my favorite reads.
Maybe it is time to join the mindless horde, ignore my privacy rights and issues about Twitter, MySpace and Facebook and join the rest of the one-line-lemmings.
What do you think? Is it time to close the doors here at The Daily Snooze? Are blogs truly moribund? Or is there a “market” for something more than one liners and mindless “tweets” about the quality of toilet tissue recently acquired? Can one actually maintain a blog with only a public library internet feed once a week? Truly, I am serious when I ask all fourteen or so of you faithful readers. It is only for you and my gynormous ego that I do this, after all.
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10 comments:
facebook & twitter are a bit too mainstream social for my taste, blog away Will!
One can do both facebook and a blog. I have been for about a year. Don't do much on facebook; my main conduit to the internet community is still my blog. But many folks that I "met" through blogging only DO facebook anymore, so if i want to keep track of them, I have to do facebook too.
Sucks about bloglines. I really don't have time to research another feed source...
I like Facebook, don't bother with twitter, but I don't think blogs are going anywhere soon. I use them together...use FB to get my blog updates to relatives who like the convenience of grabbing them there. I used to use Blog Rolling too, but gave up on it a couple of years ago because it was so unstable.
What? Bloglines is the reader I use. Hmmm, wonder how many of my blogs I will lose track of.
Please don't close up shop. As long as there's a reader, I'll be reading. Google Reader is pretty good. I had a bad feeling about ask.com buying Bloglines and I was right.
I've been on FB for a few years, and on Twitter nearly as long and to me, comparing them to blogs and feed readers is like comparing apples, oranges, and watermelons. They're very different things. For me, they each serve a purpose and I want to keep them separate in their own special ways.
Had to delete 2 duplicate comments. Ironically, Blogger and Chrome were having a spat, so I came into Firefox to try again, only to discover 3 versions of my comment.
I've been using Sage for a long time. It's a Firefox add-on, and I really like the way it works. I have been linking to bloglines for my blogroll, though. Not sure what I'm going to do about that.
Thank you all for your comments. I'll give the issues a hard look. Maybe it's time for a redesign ... without a blog roll.
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