Feedly releases a roadmap: promises web access, better search and more

Alan Buckingham
Jun 4, 2013
Internet
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11

Google Reader is scheduled for a July 1 execution date which is fast approaching. With that in mind, many services are beefing up their offerings and others are launching out of the blue. The one that many users seem to be migrating to is Feedly, which has done much to strengthen its offering, with servers and bandwidth added.

Now the RSS app maker releases a roadmap covering its plans in the near future, and it could be called ambitious. But, those big efforts are paying off. According to the company, it has seen a huge spike in popularity and user retention.

"68% of the users who try feedly end up converting into weekly active users. Active users have been doubling the amount of time they spend reading their feedly. And thanks to a great partnership with Buffer, we have seen a 10 fold increase in the amount of content feedly users share on Google+, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest"

The new roadmap offers a ton of promise that must now be delivered upon. The company has ambitious plans for the future, with major updates heading down the pike.

Feedly claims to have added new employees on both sides of the business in an effort to beef up response and load time, making it faster in all aspects.

In addition, the company promises improved search, better web access and Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 integration, improved group sharing and a litany of the usual bug fixes that come with any update.

However, perhaps the biggest news was this -- "we have been working behind the curtains with the developers of Reeder,Press, Nextgen Reader, Newsify and gReader as design partners for our Normandy project. Today we are excited to announce that you will be able to access your feedly from all these apps before Google Reader retires and that the access to feedly API will be free".

Conclusion

Feedly is one of many alternatives looking to fill the soon to be vacant shoes of Google Reader. We shall see which come out on top, but customers certainly have some choices, which is always good for both the market and the consumer.

Martin's take

For me, the big news is that the company is working on a web-only version of the feed reader. This is long overdue and a much requested feature and probably the biggest hurdle the company has yet to take.

Web access ensures that users can make use of the service at locations where they cannot install browser extensions or access their phones which may help convince them giving Feedly a try especially if they are looking for an all-device all-locations solution.

Don't get me wrong. Improved speed, search functionality and the other features are all great, but web access is probably what will catapult the RSS reader to the next level.

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Comments

  1. gary said on June 6, 2013 at 5:55 am
    Reply

    I’d like to know whether the roadmap mentions whether Feedly will be available in Internet Explorer.

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on June 6, 2013 at 8:29 am
      Reply

      Well the web interface will be usable in Internet Explorer.

  2. Gautam Sampathkumar said on June 5, 2013 at 12:07 am
    Reply

    Hi Guys,

    If what you want is the ability to skim large #s of headlines, organize lots of feeds, label them, tag articles for later reading in one fast unobtrusive “no magazine layout” reader, SwarmIQ is your choice.
    Sign up at http://www.swarmiq.com/register/GOOGLEREADERISDEAD , click on the Google reader icon to get all your feeds, and get up and running straight away.
    Disclosure: I’m on the team that built this site :-) Also, we don’t have “Google Alerts” type functionality yet.

  3. SFer said on June 4, 2013 at 10:09 pm
    Reply

    As an ex-GReader user,
    tried Feedly. No go.

    I’ve finally converted all my RSS feed subscriptions,
    (exported from GReader),
    to INOreader.
    https://www.inoreader.com/

    So far, MUCH better than Feedly,
    or any of the other readers I tested.

    It has everything I missed from GReader,
    lots of easy-to-use features,
    a responsive author,
    plus a very owerful boolean Search
    of my RSS feeds.

    All that to me, is VERY important.
    Just sharing my experience here.

  4. Rocky said on June 4, 2013 at 7:37 pm
    Reply

    I agree that web access is highly desirable . I browse using a mix of Firefox,Chrome and IE . It is not possible at all ( as far as I know) to install Feedly in IE – web access would remove this roadblock.

    Feedly’s presentation is attractive and the Android app is good but at the minute I mostly use The Old Reader which offers full web access without add-ons. Downside is that it is not very readable on a smartphone and as far as I know there is no Android app

  5. Zeus said on June 4, 2013 at 5:37 pm
    Reply

    As a NewsBlur customer, I can tell you this may be your best bet in a post-Google Reader world.

    Long story.

  6. Karl J. Gephart said on June 4, 2013 at 5:17 pm
    Reply

    I love Feedly even more than I did GR. The functionality and GUI in both Win Firefox and the iOS app (iPad) has really improved over the last couple of months (especially the big “green checkmark” at the bottom of a feed to mark as read!). About the only thing I’d like to see is filtering out posts (to not show) within a feed based on keywords. I used to have that with a Greasemonkey script and really miss it! Otherwise, Feedly rocks!

  7. Matt said on June 4, 2013 at 5:03 pm
    Reply

    While I’m glad Feedly is finally planning to do the things I wished they’d done years ago (particularly the regular web app with no extension required), I recently got into the Hive (formerly HiveMined) beta and it shows a lot of promise– enough so that I’m happy to ride out the bugs as its features begin to fall into place.

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on June 4, 2013 at 5:16 pm
      Reply

      Matt can you post the address of Hive please?

      1. Matt said on June 4, 2013 at 5:48 pm
        Reply

        Sure, Martin: http://hivereader.com

      2. Martin Brinkmann said on June 4, 2013 at 5:53 pm
        Reply

        Thanks.

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