bloglines v google reader

I am not going to pretend neutrality on this issue. I started reading feeds a few years ago to get through the workday in a library office without windows. My first feed reader was a desktop client (had to download and install it) called BottomFeeder. My supervisor used Bloglines so I set it up, too, but quickly found it too clunky to use. Then I found Google Reader and my life hasn’t been the same since.

• Google Reader has collapsible windows for each post. This makes it easy to see what you have and have not read, and what you are reading and what you are not reading.
• Bloglines does not have this.
• Google Reader has a clean interface. Bloglines does not have this.

• When I subscribed to Boing Boing in Bloglines, it said I had 200 unread posts. After clicking on it once, they were all marked as read! When I came back, nothing appeared.
• A positive thing: the “playlist” function, where you can customize groups of feeds to read together, is something that, to my knowledge, you can’t do in Google. If you organize by folders, however, it is easy to achieve this effect.

Anyway, I suppose it’s always good to have options. It also seems as though there are many librarians on Bloglines: a techie librarian blog, the Shifted Librarian, was listed as one of the 50 most popular!

Regardless, I won’t be switching back anytime soon.