Back then I wasn’t so much of a blog reader. I had at most a dozen of sources I would read on a regular basis. Then somewhere around 2008 I discovered Google Reader: an awesome tool that allowed not only to subscribe to feeds, organize them and read them through a unified interface just like any news aggregator, but more importantly allowed to share news of interest with other people. By following people I knew were interested in topics relevant to me, I would get insights from those topics without the burden of browsing other hundreds of sources by myself. I used Google Reader daily for the last years, sharpening my fields of interest over the time.
Until that fateful day when Reader was shot in the head after someone decided Google+ was the way to go. They probably thought people would have no choice but embracing it. I don’t know how things went after that, but from what I saw most felt less than happy at having it forced down their throat. The user base of Newsblur skyrocketed, much expectations were put on HiveMined, but then came the status quo: Newsblur doesn’t have the social feature yet, and HiveMined is not ready yet either. Meanwhile, some argue Google Reader is still the best newsreader around.
We Google Reader orphans are looking for a new home to party again, but we all know the community is shattered. What made the strength of Reader was its ubiquity. Many of us wouldn’t even try Google+, because of the feeling that we were betrayed by Google and that it’s likely to happen again anytime. And now we are waiting to see where everyone will go.
Until we have that answer, supposing it ever comes, I thought I would give a try at a good old blog. One thing I learned while using Reader is that just gathering things one find of interest can already make an interesting editorial line. So from now on I will use this blog the way I was sharing things, making it a reliable bookmark reference for myself and hopefully an interesting feed for other people. Oh, and I plan to write things too: it will be an opportunity to try myself at publishing in English, since it’s not my mother tongue. For more autenticity, feel free to read with an outrageous French accent. :)
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