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Bloglines Is Dead, Accuses Twitter Of Murdering It

Bloglines Is Dead, Accuses Twitter Of Murdering It

After popularizing online feed readers, it looks as if IAC (owners of Ask.com) are permanently shutting down Bloglines apparently due to lack of interest.

However what’s surprising is that it was not a rival like Google Reader who killed off Bloglines, but rather a Xoogler (aka ex-Googler) whose social network made Bloglines obsolete.

It’s finally happened. Bloglines,the troubled RSS feed reader owned by IAC, will officially be shut down, the company has told TechCrunch exclusively. The site has had a tumultuous history, so it’s unsurprising that IAC has finally put the platform out of its misery. […]

Doug Leeds, President of Ask.com tells us that the reasoning behind closing Bloglines came down to the fact that the market for people who use Bloglines (and RSS readers, he adds) isn’t growing, and is actually shrinking as people shift to realtime news streams such as Twitter to consume content on the web. (via TechCrunch)

IAC plans on shutting down the server on October 1st, although they have yet to release an official announcement to their users (at least the ones who have not yet defected to Google Reader).

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While it’s easy to blame Twitter for the death of their once glorious feed reader, the real killer is not Twitter but Google, whose entrance into the RSS reader market has disrupted the entire industry (as gReader is free of cost and ads).

With Bloglines calling it quits, RSS addicts will probably have very few options available outside of Google and the desktop (although the former will probably capitalize on Bloglines demise once IAC makes a formal announcement).

View Comments (5)
  • Oh well! so be it. I was using Bloglines occasionally but, when they added that really bad, long captcha, I quit using them totally.

  • Is this simply the evolution of aggregated news, which more and more people are sharing through social media, rather than through isolated RSS feeds? One wonders why Google Reader hasn’t suffered the same rate of diminishing returns, so to speak. Is it because Google’s cloud is so large, the official SERP authority has muscle, or a law of attrition. I don’t know of any other RSS reader services that are doing much better. Perhaps it’s because they’re not diverse enough to offer something other than, essentially, an online newspaper…?

  • @ David: I think it’s because Google Reader is not only more social (as you can share on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Blogger, etc.) but also because users can subscribe to blogs via their browsers now (something that didn’t occur to me until now).

  • It seems like I’m the only fan of bloglines. I thought it was a great free service and I’m very sad and upset that I have to find a new solution. It was the solution for me, otherwise I wouldn’t use it daily. Keep track of RSS feeds online (love the mobility instead of having my feeds tied to one computer only), able to mark un/read, easy to un/subscribe to feeds. It does one thing and does it well, something I think Google could learn from. I love their search engine, I loathe their internet monopoly. I have had no issues with bloglines loading, merely some sites may have RSS code issues or bloglines has issues processing their feeds. To me it’s not about sharing news, it’s about keeping up on news. Bloglines to me is what a dvr is to tv. Plus, the sites one generally lists as being shareable to are absolute crap in my user experience.

  • I’m quite surprised that they’re shutting down their “bloglines” service – if you review their Alexa traffic rank for the maximum period possible it’s actually stayed fairly constant @ a ranking of around about 2,500. The only possible reason I can see for it’s closing is that it’s simply not possible for them to make money with it.

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