Google Reader is gone. No farewell message. No thank you for the support. In fact, I can see my feeds in Google Reader, I just can’t interact with them.
A pretty clear indication that Google really doesn’t give a Tinker’s Damn for customers – only their data and the dollars they can glean from it. This whole experience has had a profound impact on me from the first moment months ago when I first learned that Google was killing Google Reader for no good reason [and believe me, I’ve read them all over the past few months].
This stupid move, along with other ones like Windows 8 by Microsoft leave me wondering where I can place my trust. Oddly enough, I find myself rethinking open source products like Ubuntu, Firefox and Thunderbird. Who knows where that will lead?!
In the meantime, thank you Google Reader. Thanks to you, I consumed over a half a million articles in the past 6.5 years of use and I am what I am today because of what I learned from you. And, thank you feedly for stepping into the breach! I have loved you for over 4 years and used you alongside Google Reader. I’m glad you won the reader race!
First, denial. “No way, dude, that’s got to be a rumor.”
Then anger. “Don’t Be Evil my $%&! How could they do this to me?”
Bargaining. “Could a new version of Google Reader really save Digg?”
Depression. “I can haz no more LOLz.”
And finally, we come to acceptance. Yes, it’s true. Google Reader really is going away on July 1. So if you haven’t rustled up an alternative yet, it’s time.
If you’re a Google Reader user, obviously you need a new tool to read your subscriptions. We have a few thoughts for you on that.
But if you’re a content publisher, you’ll also need to make sure that your audience has a way to continue tuning in for everything you do.
Feel free to point your audience to this post, or you may want to craft a message of your own with more individualized suggestions for your audience’s needs. But be sure you send out a clear, specific call to action and keep those subscribers on board — no one wants to lose a big chunk of their audience just because a tool goes away.
Frankly, I went through all these stages a month or so ago and happily shifted my attention to feedly which I had used as an alternative to Google Reader since 2009. I’m happy to say that the folks at feedly have really shone in stepping up as the only logical choice to replace Google Reader…
It syncs flawlessly in the cloud
You can automate it with ifttt.com now
It has better features and is more eye appealing than Google Reader
Take a look;
So, Google Reader — good riddance! feedly rocks…
PS I do NOT agree with Simone that email is a replacement for Google Reader! Email should be preserved for ‘just in time’ information; send the just in case stuff to feedly!
One of the most important things thinkers who aspire to thought leadership need to do is to effectively manage the information they need to nurture and nourish their expertise…
I firmly believe the single most important issue in social media is not whether or not it works to generate leads; rather, how can I add social media to my already overflowing plate and still get home for supper. I think the first place where people can find additional time in their day is by more effectively handling e-mail. Conversely, I think it’s pretty difficult to think about the idea of becoming a thought leader if you have thousands of unread e-mails in your inbox especially when e-mail can be so easy to manage…
The first of the holy trio is Gmail. There are a lot of tips and tricks that you can apply to Gmail however I don’t think any one of them is more important than this: using e-mail for what I called just-in-time information — information that affects relationships and revenue. Everything else belongs somewhere else! If your e-mail inbox doesn’t look like this then you’re going to have a hard time adding the extra work that you need to do to establish your thought leadership position…
Your inbox CAN look like this most of the time…
The second member of the holy trio is feedly. I use feedly to track the sites, searches and sources that nourish my expertise. Instead of chasing information around the Internet I make the things I need to know flow to me. Because feedly is completely cross platform down to the smart phone level I can use it in Mac, Windows or Ubuntu [I prefer Chrome as my primary browser and all three] or on an Android or iOS device. Feedly gives me the ability to create a virtual newspaper jammed with the best content in the world and it’s free! It also allows me to quickly share the good things I find…
Use feedly to create a virtual newspaper that nourishes your expertise…
Last but by no means least is Evernote. Evernote is a cloud-based app that is completely cross platform down to the smart phone level so I can access the things I save from anywhere…
Evernote is the best platform for saving and sharing great information…
These three tools together give me everything I need to effectively manage the information I need to continually refresh my expertise. In the following screen cast of show you some of my favorite tips for using all three:
These are just the first three tools in my workflow — you can find more ideas here. If you could use some help managing the information you need to stay on top your game please contact me and ask me about personal digital coaching…
If you were hoping against hope that Google was going to come to their senses and change their mind you were in denial. It’s time to wake up and smell the feedly coffee! Digg is moving too slowly to help people in transition so my official recommendation is to move to feedly…
Here’s how you can prepare for the ‘end of the Google Reader world’…
…and everything is right in my ‘Personal News Aggregation’ universe. For about a week, I was having problems syncing my accounts on feedly and Google Reader and it was really frustrating — especially since it has always worked so well in the past. As you can see, however, my desktop version…
Last week, I encouraged readers to keep calm and continue using Google Reader. While I still think that’s good advice, I’m not so sure any longer that Google will be rolling Reader into Google+. Why? I had forgotten at the time that Google had recently killed Feedburner and was not aware that Google had taken the RSS subscription extension out of the chrome Web store.
These three events together point to what innovation expert Tim Kastelle called a ‘shaping strategy’ on the part of Google to coerce people to publish and share in a way that Google wants them to. Tim commented “I definitely think that they’re following a shaping strategy – though I’m not sure about whether or not killing RSS actually helps it. For me the big issue is this: people that rely only on social media to find out what’s going on still need RSS, even if they don’t use it themselves.” Tim also pointed me to this article by Joshua Gans on The Social Structure Of News. In it, Gans says:
“The problem is that from what we know about the social structure of social media is that there are a set of roles available. Take Mark Thoma. His blog and twitter feeds have a huge following. Why? Because he reads all of the Econ blogs and picks out what he thinks is best. If you read Thoma, chances are you don’t need Google Reader. He is the social web.
But how does Thoma operate? My guess is that he uses a feed reader and has a system for tagging good posts and forwarding them on to others. Sometimes it is just a link. Other times he provides a quote and a little commentary. Remove his tools and his job gets harder.
Given this it should be no surprised that the most dismayed about the loss of Google Reader were the contributors to social web curation. There is only need for a few of these but they do an important job so disrupting them will harm many. In the Econ world, these people are well known. They are Brad de Long, Tyler Cowen and a few more specialized bloggers. In the days of old I used to do this too with multiple posts daily but the others were better and so I dropped back to being one of the many who hoped these curators would pick up their posts.
My point is that if you say you don’t use Google Reader because the social web takes care of you, then you are mistaken. The social web needs its tools and indirectly so do you.”
In their content guidelines published 11/1012, Google says
“One of the most important steps in improving your site’s ranking in Google search results is to ensure that it contains plenty of rich information that includes relevant keywords, used appropriately, that indicate the subject matter of your content.
However, some webmasters attempt to improve their pages’ ranking and attract visitors by creating pages with many words but little or no authentic content. Google will take action against domains that try to rank more highly by just showing scraped or other cookie-cutter pages that don’t add substantial value to users.”
Killing Google Reader goes beyond Google’s usual move to force users into the walled garden of Google+; I now believe this is a shaping strategy to kill curation and auto posting as a form of content marketing and to give Google more control over publishers in much the same way book publishers had control over authors in the ‘old days’.
There’s still really no rush to find a replacement for Google Reader — if you’re using Google Reader you’ll be able to export your sources before July 1 and import them into the next great RSS reader. What to do about Google is another issue altogether. Google has ‘exceeded their brief‘ and is getting evil…
How about you? Do you see the ‘shaping strategy’ or do you have a different perspective?
Looking for a Google Reader alternative? Michael Hyatt writes:
On Wednesday, Google surprised denizens of the Internet with the news that they would be discontinuing Google Reader. This was a sad day for people like me who consume most of their blog content with this simple, easy-to-use RSS aggregator.
Almost immediately, I was flooded with messages from people wondering what I was going to do. You would have thought the North Koreans had just launched a missile against California!
Though I depend on Reader to forage the blogosphere in search of useful information for my tribe, I wasn’t in a huge hurry to solve the problem. After all, Google won’t be shutting down the service until July 1, 2013—more than three months from now.
As a result, I replied to these inquiries with, “I’m not sure what I will use to replace Google Reader. Right now, I am considering several alternatives.” But, that didn’t seem like a very good answer.
Like Michael Hyatt, I too, was bombarded by the same query from clients and students. Unlike Michael Hyatt though, I don’t recommend rushing off to find another RSS reader just yet…
In their announcement, Google says “There are two simple reasons for this: usage of Google Reader has declined, and as a company we’re pouring all of our energy into fewer products. We think that kind of focus will make for a better user experience.” Regarding the first point, I think Google Reader usage has declined because Google has done a poor job of supporting the product and people are either unwilling or unable to do the work necessary to learn how to ‘speak’ rss and Google Reader. Google warned users that changes were coming on 11/1/11 when it ‘neutered’ Google Reader by removing some of its most popular features in favor of tighter Google+ integration. While it returned some of those key features without fanfare about a year later, many users had already moved on at that point…
Regarding the second point in their announcement, “and as a company we’re pouring all of our energy into fewer products”, the mantra at Google has been “Google+ is the answer, now what is your question?” for almost two years now. I predict with a high degree of confidence that before July 1, Google Reader will appear in a Google+ incarnation; whether it does or doesn’t, you’ll be able to retain use of your feeds in another rss reader via Google Takeout.
Hyatt and I both agree that Feedly, with or without Google Reader, is an awesome rss reader and it is one that I have recommended on this blog since September of 2011! It still, however lacks some of the key features like synthesizing and publishing aggregated rss feeds that are a critical part of Google Reader…
3 months is a long time on the internet and in those next few months, Google will most likely announce their new “Google+ centric” rss reader and several companies like Digg and Feedly will announce new or improved versions of what they’re currently doing. In the meantime, Keep Calm and [Keep Using] Google Reader…
The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing, right? Here’s a minimalist workflow for content and thought leadership marketing that will help you get found when people are looking for you and what you do in the coming year…
The beautiful thing about this simple workflow is that you have to do the reading anyway in order to maintain your expert status — why not turn it into thought leadership marketing? Also every tool is free and completely cross platform and it could all be executed from a $199 Chromebook. I explain here:
How could I explain this more clearly or make this post better? Comment below or use the contact form above…
Friend, mentor and client Nilofer Merchant posted recently about the problem of fragmentation:
It’s a fragmented world. And it’s only becoming more so. It used to be that when people wrote, they wrote more deeply. In the early days of the web (pre-twitter), I remember hand picking the few voices I would listen to and then putting them into my RSS feeder and checking for their essays. Essays, not tweets, were the way we shared what we were thinking. But as “content” has become more important to maintain a standing online, more and more people are entering into the fray. More and more people who may not even have a point of view to advocate but just want to participate in the conversation.
As content becomes more fragmented, you could try and compete with that by doing more and more, by curating other people’s content, by then running your content through Twylah, by having that “twitter magazine” come out which puts all your tweets and links in one place so that people can catch it if they missed each particular one.
Or you could do the opposite. You could go deep. You could be that voice that everyone listens to because when it speaks, it is so deep and rich that it’s worth slowing down to listen to. Sort of a Morgan Freeman voice, in the times of Justin Bieber bop. Maybe it will allow the light of an idea to be seen more clearly.” There’s more at the source: In a fragmented world, go deep – Nilofer Merchant
If I were talking with Nilofer, I’d gently push back on this one. ‘Going deep’ does not preclude using Twylah; rather, I think, the answer to fragmentation and ‘going deep’ is focus…
When I first started blogging I was not confident in my own skillset and my focus was a mile wide and six inches deep. My tagline was “Marketing, Sales and Technology for small business, non-profits and academic institutions”. It makes me laugh now because there are no dozen websites that can cover THIS landscape effectively. I used to curate anything and everything related to those topics sometimes posting over 20 times a day! I got traffic but it wasn’t really relevant and it didn’t get me customers. Over time, Nilofer helped me go deep and realize my ‘onlyness’ was really helping thinkers to become thought leaders through the use of a minimal toolkit for content marketing. Now my tagline is “content marketing for thought leadership” and I help experts get found when people are looking for what they do. By going deeper, I may lose the opportunity to develop a small business website but I might gain the opportunity to work with a TED Fellow like Nina Tandon which is much more rewarding in the long run. Now, too, I’m more confident in my onlyness, I only post a couple of times per week…
Nilofer and I have had this discussion before and I think we both agree: If our thoughts are going to resonate with our target audience we need to understand the questions they are asking and align our answers with their queries. If we position ourselves as the obvious answer to the questions of the people we want to attract, we will get found when people are looking for ‘that one voice’. It’s not good enough however simply to think deep thoughts; we need to let people know that we are thinking them. Nilofer is a great thinker on strategy but I direct my energy toward ‘thoughts, tools and tactics’ for content marketing and ‘thought leadership’ marketing; I think the answer here is not either/or it’s both/and. I don’t think Nilofer’s saying that Twylah is a bad thing and I think she’d agree you need to go deep thoughtwise AND master ‘thought leadership’ marketing toolwise because the two go together like peanut butter and chocolate — it’s just that mindlessly tweeting and retweeting doesn’t do much to add value…
In closing, here are the 3 tools I recommend for ‘thought leadership’ marketing:
Google Reader
WordPress
Twylah
Ed. 2019: The current version of this list would be:
Google News or Inoreader
WordPress
Buffer
I posted about them here just last week. They are the tools that will help you get found when you decide to ‘go deep’ and become the one voice [because it doesn’t matter how deep you go if no one can find you]…
Ever heard of the Pareto Principle? Mostly likely you have but may not know it by that name. “The Pareto principle (also known as the 80–20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.” In the ‘e1evation workflow‘, 80% of my results come from having mastered just three tools. Why is this important? My clients include thought leaders like authorNilofer Merchant, author and professorPhilip Auerswald, author and professor Timothy Kastelle, consultant Gretchen Jahn and professor and TEDFellowNina Tandon; people like that don’t have the time or patience to learn an infinite number of tools — they need to know the three that will yield the most effective results…
I teach them [and all my clients] that if I could only use three tools for effective content marketing there is no confusion in my mind as to what they would be:
Why? No other combination of tools covers the basics of content marketing better. Google Reader helps me find great content that deepens my expertise. WordPress and Twylah help me document my expertise by turning everything I create or curate into content marketing with Search Engine Optimization [SEO] value for my domain. Let me explain…
Here are all the tools I use in the ‘e1evation workflow’:
And here are the 20% that yield the 80% of my results:
Questions? Feedback? Comment or contact me to talk more about how this applies to you and your situation…
…This is going to be a long one – I had an epiphany this morning…
Brilliance can be found in many places — especially if you keep your mouth shut and your ears open! First, a bit of a story; six months ago I decided to get off my fat ass and start exercising. Thanks to Endomondo, I know that I walked and biked for a total of 16 hours in the month of March. Being the overachiever that I am by the month of July I had doubled that time. The net result? Tendinitis…
I’m now in physical therapy trying to get back on the exercise path again. This morning, I asked my physical therapist Lynn to recommend a knee brace to help me. I was looking at all the options in Google and had visions of the mother of all knee braces…
…when I shared my plan with Lynn, however, she had a different perspective and her advice was brilliant; get as much support as you need and nothing more. I was blown away by the wisdom of her simple statement. It echoes the wisdom of great thinkers like David Allen and Stephen Covey.
How does this relate to thought leadership and getting found? Most likely you’ve heard me say before that, in the words of the immortal Albert Einstein “things must be made as simple as possible, but no simpler”. The thought occurred to me this morning that in order to be recognized as a thought leader, or the obvious expert in your field you only need to think about three things:
Passion
Purpose
Plan
I’m not going to spend a lot of time on number one; Confucius said find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life. If you don’t have passion for your “onlyness” you need to find it or move on…
Regarding number 2, it’s great to have a purpose but in order to be profitable your purpose has to solve a problem [reference Tim Kastelle’s classic post on The Underpants Gnomes]. Now call me Captain Obvious, but the best way to see what problems people are trying to solve is to see what problems people are trying to solve. That is not a typo. Read it again. “How do I do that?” you might say. Google is not only great for finding things, but it also happily shares the things people are looking for. Again with the Captain Obvious, but if I want to be found it seems to me that I should write about what people are looking for. If I understand my unique value proposition and can link it to what people are looking for I will be found as a solution.
The following screencast shows three different ways — ranked in order of complexity — of finding what people are looking for;
If you consistently find and share good information that effectively solves problems for which people are searching for solutions, over time you will be found and recognized as the expert in your field.
The short answer to number 3, is to consistently find and communicate that information that documents your expertise in your field. Again in the spirit of Einstein’s razor, I think there are only three tools you need to master in order to deepen and document your expertise:
Google Alerts and/or Google Reader
WordPress
Twitter using Twylah’s Power Tweet
I have written many times about the power of Google Reader but not so much about the power of Google Alerts. To me a Google Alert is a kind of a virtual intern that will scour the Internet 24x7x365 to find and deliver to you exactly what you’re looking for. Sometimes the art of being an expert is to stay a page ahead of your followers; what better way then to search what people are searching for and put the answers all in one place? Captain Obvious again; why not take the most popular searches you find and turn them into Google Alerts? When you find good content in Google Reader using Google Alerts and either curate the content in the form of a blog post or tweet it using Twyla’s Power Tweet you attach that content to your domain on the Internet. Here’s how I do it [you may have a better solution]:
I may be wrong about this [I was actually wrong once back in the 80’s] but in my mind there is no simpler, faster, cheaper way to get found when people are looking for YOU. Comment below or connect with me so we can talk about how this applies to you and your situation…
Going back to our Getting Things Done [GTD] decision diagram for a minute…
The in basket I’m using more often than not is Google Reader. When I see ‘actionable’ content, I decide where is the best place to share that content using the following diagram:
I focused in an earlier post about sharing via Twylah and other tools — today the focus is on curation and blogging as a means of Getting Things Done [GTD]…
How do I decide that something is bloggable? Well here are some guidelines that I use…
When I come across content that is so brilliant that I could have written it myself if I would only take the time. Seriously, when I come across really good content that I want to expound upon and call out to my clients and readers…
When I find a great illustration or infographic
When I find a great YouTube video
When commenting on this content gives me a change to share something about my brand by agreeing, disagreeing, adding or subtracting…
You get the idea, right? Anything I find on the Internet is fair game as long as I remember to do three things:
Block quote and indent the content I am curating
Provide a link back to the original source
Be ready to move the content if requested by the owner
I firmly believe that when you curate effectively everybody wins. The original author gives exposure to my readers. My readers get a different perspective. Finally, my post is easier to write and I get the Search Engine Optimization [SEO] benefits from the content I curate…
Here are some thoughts from Suzanne Bird-Harris and a few others on the rationale for curation and some ideas on how to structure a curative post along with a screencast on how I do it using Windows Live Writer, a free blog editor from Microsoft…
Personally? I think curation is one of the best ways to supplement the original thinking on my blog. Here are some thoughts on curation in the blogging process…
Personally? I think curation is one of the best ways to supplement the original thinking on my blog. Here are some thoughts on curation in the blogging process…
Personally? I think curation is one of the best ways to supplement the original thinking on my blog. Here are some thoughts on curation in the blogging process…
I’m always trying to explain things in a way that is as simple as possible but no simpler, so I thought of another way to take a pass at David Allen’sGetting Things Done [GTD] principles as applied to the curation process. Here is the workflow map:
Here is how I apply it to the curation process:
Now, let me talk you through it:
Here are the two posts I mentioned in the screencast:
Over at Lifehacker today, they’re talking about the Dark Side of Getting Things Done [GTD] but here at e1evation, llc, it’s all rainbows and unicorns and we’re talking about how to apply Getting Things Done [GTD] to the curation process…
Now if you haven’t read David Allen’s classic productivity work, this would be a great weekend to do it. You can click the image to the right in order to purchase and download a copy to your Kindle or Kindle software immediately. I like to repost he Getting Things Done [GTD] workflow diagram as a reminder of the options…
…in this screencast we’ll be using Google Reader as the ‘in basket’ and the ‘stuff’ we’ll be processing is the articles that come from our trusted sources. We’ll be using Twylah and Power Tweeting to process our actionable items. Give it a view…
Why Twylah?
Questions? Feedback? Want to apply Getting Things Done [GTD] to your curation process? Use the form below or connect with me in social media…
![KeepCalmStudio.com-[Crown]-Keep-Calm-And-Keep-Using-Google-Reader](http://elevation.company/files/2013/03/KeepCalmStudio.com-Crown-Keep-Calm-And-Keep-Using-Google-Reader.png)
Bright, shiny objects! 
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