Bloglines sucks

Uncategorized 1 Minute

Hey, Bloglines, I don’t really care who’s problem it is, but my feed works just fine on Google Reader and doesn’t work on Bloglines. So, the only conclusion I’m going to come to: Bloglines sucks. Please fix before everyone switches to Google Reader.

UPDATE: Matt Mullenweg admitted it was a bug in WordPress and said that they are working on fixing it. Sorry for the stink, but I needed to force the issue because I was losing readers over on Bloglines.

Published by Robert Scoble

I help entrepreneurs build their technology business' story, help with getting ready for investors, with other launch plans, and many other strategic things that can help your new startup. Call to talk: +1-425-205-1921 (text first).

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65 thoughts on “Bloglines sucks”

  3. Too late! (at least for me)

    I tried GReader and I have switched to it with great enthusiasm. Not that there’s anything HORRIBLE about Bloglines, but Google Reader just … WORKS. Like Gmail worked for me the minute I tried it.

    Bob.

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  4. Too late! (at least for me)

    I tried GReader and I have switched to it with great enthusiasm. Not that there’s anything HORRIBLE about Bloglines, but Google Reader just … WORKS. Like Gmail worked for me the minute I tried it.

    Bob.

    Like

  5. I try not to play grammar police with “quickie” blog entries, but let me humbly offer a correction on this one, because it actually reduced my skimming speed. I was practicing with my RSS list for my speed reading course –2000 WPM is a good investment if you reas as much as I do, and I am sure you do- and my brain paused and backtracked to figure out what you were talking about. You should have written “whose problem” not “who’s problem,” as “who’s” is simply the contraction of “who’s” while “whose” reflects ownership or possession.
    Like many, you might say “who cares.” Unlike many, you owe so much to expressing yourself in writing. Now that I squandared time gained through speed reading by a nerdy comment, I can continue procrascinating by reading your blog 🙂 Have a great new year!

    Like

  6. I try not to play grammar police with “quickie” blog entries, but let me humbly offer a correction on this one, because it actually reduced my skimming speed. I was practicing with my RSS list for my speed reading course –2000 WPM is a good investment if you reas as much as I do, and I am sure you do- and my brain paused and backtracked to figure out what you were talking about. You should have written “whose problem” not “who’s problem,” as “who’s” is simply the contraction of “who’s” while “whose” reflects ownership or possession.
    Like many, you might say “who cares.” Unlike many, you owe so much to expressing yourself in writing. Now that I squandared time gained through speed reading by a nerdy comment, I can continue procrascinating by reading your blog 🙂 Have a great new year!

    Like

  11. Everyone already switched!
    And I think I was among the first switchers, a year or so ago… poor Bloglines still can’t mount a decent come-back, and I don’t expect that they ever will…

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  12. Everyone already switched!
    And I think I was among the first switchers, a year or so ago… poor Bloglines still can’t mount a decent come-back, and I don’t expect that they ever will…

    Like

  13. Since the topic is newsreaders, I hope this won’t be taken as “advertising”…

    Another option is to use PimpMyNews (http://www.PimpMynews.com) which is a new “talking newsreader” that lets you listen to your news and blogs online, or on-the-go on your iPod or iPhone (or other MP3 players).

    Robert’s feed works fine on PimpMyNews. It also comes pre-loaded with 1,000+ other feeds.

    Like

  14. Since the topic is newsreaders, I hope this won’t be taken as “advertising”…

    Another option is to use PimpMyNews (http://www.PimpMynews.com) which is a new “talking newsreader” that lets you listen to your news and blogs online, or on-the-go on your iPod or iPhone (or other MP3 players).

    Robert’s feed works fine on PimpMyNews. It also comes pre-loaded with 1,000+ other feeds.

    Like

  15. Robert,

    I was having this issue with your feed on Bloglines too. It was quite annoying. At first, I thought of contacting you by email, but figured it will get lost in your inbox with the many other emails you get.

    It makes me wonder whether Bloglines reads their support forums. I (and apparently others) have been having an issue with my feed; I posted about it in their official forum, but have yet to get a response.

    I tried using Google Reader in the past, however, I really like the font size and color of Bloglines over Google Reader. I find it much easier to scan through all my 200+ feeds.

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  16. Robert,

    I was having this issue with your feed on Bloglines too. It was quite annoying. At first, I thought of contacting you by email, but figured it will get lost in your inbox with the many other emails you get.

    It makes me wonder whether Bloglines reads their support forums. I (and apparently others) have been having an issue with my feed; I posted about it in their official forum, but have yet to get a response.

    I tried using Google Reader in the past, however, I really like the font size and color of Bloglines over Google Reader. I find it much easier to scan through all my 200+ feeds.

    Like

  17. Fwiw, Google Reader doesn’t scale well over 1k feeds and Bloglines is publicly moving to support protocols like OpenID and APML. The way that Ask.com blogsearch leverages Bloglines subscriber numbers to fight spam is another thing Google Reader could learn from. I don’t use Bloglines myself (I use Newsgator’s NNW on the desktop) but I’m just saying, total Google Reader triumphalism isn’t warranted imho.

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  18. Fwiw, Google Reader doesn’t scale well over 1k feeds and Bloglines is publicly moving to support protocols like OpenID and APML. The way that Ask.com blogsearch leverages Bloglines subscriber numbers to fight spam is another thing Google Reader could learn from. I don’t use Bloglines myself (I use Newsgator’s NNW on the desktop) but I’m just saying, total Google Reader triumphalism isn’t warranted imho.

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  19. I agree with Marshall.

    Under their new leadership, they’re doing their best to reclaim users they’ve lost to Google Reader (my assumption, which is probably correct, is that most of the readers they’ve lost have likely switched to Google Reader, but this assumption may indeed not be true).

    And, two things Marshall didn’t mention, probably because they’re not new advantages for Bloglines, is the option to receive e-newsletters along with your RSS feeds and the ability to create a RSS feed that is a search within your feeds. I use both features and they’re EXTREMELY handy.

    I scan a couple of hundred feeds in my desktop reader, Omea Pro. It’s a FANTASTIC reader, better than anything I’ve seen and I’ve tried at least two dozen. Free, too. But for several hundred other feeds, I’ve done two things. First, I’ve run a keywords/phrases search within the feeds and then created a RSS feed for updated search results. And I do this within my Bloglines account since my Google Reader account can’t do this. Second, I put the several hundred feeds through a FeedHub account and then filter a little bit by source priority, but mostly my memes. This means I can catch items that interest me that appear in feeds that I simply don’t have time to scan. Matter of fact, the results have often led me to adjust which feeds I regularly scan. (This second point is NOT an advantage for Bloglines over Google Reader; it’s just something that I do. It so happens that it’s a Bloglines OPML that I’ve inputted into a FeedHub account.)

    Anyway, Bloglines isn’t useless just yet — and it’s a good thing that Google Reader has competition. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of good alternatives. As much as I like Omea Pro — and it really is fantastic — it has no market share or mindshare. NewsGator is the only desktop reader with any significant mindshare, and it’s mindshare is insignificant compared to Bloglines and Google Reader.

    BTW, since the Bloglines folks are likely going to read this, I do have one major complaint with Bloglines. To Bloglines: Do NOT limit a feed to the last 200 items. Do NOT place any upper limit on the number of items for a feed or e-newsletter. This is my biggest complaint about Bloglines. And it seems like they’re pretty silly to place a limit. Perhaps you can display up to the last 200 items as a maximum for a single page of output, but ALL results should be accessible and searchable.

    One more thing (to Bloglines): The search engine is pretty awful. You need a better search engine. Are you using Ask? If so, scrap it. If not, at least give it a try.

    Like

  20. I agree with Marshall.

    Under their new leadership, they’re doing their best to reclaim users they’ve lost to Google Reader (my assumption, which is probably correct, is that most of the readers they’ve lost have likely switched to Google Reader, but this assumption may indeed not be true).

    And, two things Marshall didn’t mention, probably because they’re not new advantages for Bloglines, is the option to receive e-newsletters along with your RSS feeds and the ability to create a RSS feed that is a search within your feeds. I use both features and they’re EXTREMELY handy.

    I scan a couple of hundred feeds in my desktop reader, Omea Pro. It’s a FANTASTIC reader, better than anything I’ve seen and I’ve tried at least two dozen. Free, too. But for several hundred other feeds, I’ve done two things. First, I’ve run a keywords/phrases search within the feeds and then created a RSS feed for updated search results. And I do this within my Bloglines account since my Google Reader account can’t do this. Second, I put the several hundred feeds through a FeedHub account and then filter a little bit by source priority, but mostly my memes. This means I can catch items that interest me that appear in feeds that I simply don’t have time to scan. Matter of fact, the results have often led me to adjust which feeds I regularly scan. (This second point is NOT an advantage for Bloglines over Google Reader; it’s just something that I do. It so happens that it’s a Bloglines OPML that I’ve inputted into a FeedHub account.)

    Anyway, Bloglines isn’t useless just yet — and it’s a good thing that Google Reader has competition. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of good alternatives. As much as I like Omea Pro — and it really is fantastic — it has no market share or mindshare. NewsGator is the only desktop reader with any significant mindshare, and it’s mindshare is insignificant compared to Bloglines and Google Reader.

    BTW, since the Bloglines folks are likely going to read this, I do have one major complaint with Bloglines. To Bloglines: Do NOT limit a feed to the last 200 items. Do NOT place any upper limit on the number of items for a feed or e-newsletter. This is my biggest complaint about Bloglines. And it seems like they’re pretty silly to place a limit. Perhaps you can display up to the last 200 items as a maximum for a single page of output, but ALL results should be accessible and searchable.

    One more thing (to Bloglines): The search engine is pretty awful. You need a better search engine. Are you using Ask? If so, scrap it. If not, at least give it a try.

    Like

  21. I know when I tried Bloglines for a few days, I kept having this with Chris Prillo’s feed and your feed. I just got fed up with it and went back to the good one.

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  22. I know when I tried Bloglines for a few days, I kept having this with Chris Prillo’s feed and your feed. I just got fed up with it and went back to the good one.

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  25. It seemed to start for me on Bloglines at the same time that you added (or WordPress added) the dynamic comment thing into your RSS feed. Although I don’t see that any more in your feed, and it’s still doing it. Yeah, it’s annoying. :s

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  26. It seemed to start for me on Bloglines at the same time that you added (or WordPress added) the dynamic comment thing into your RSS feed. Although I don’t see that any more in your feed, and it’s still doing it. Yeah, it’s annoying. :s

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  29. Bloglines interface is so much better then Google Reader. My stats show Bloglines holds about a 30% share of RSS readers, compared to 50% by Google. I rarely get duplicate RSS issues but they have crept more and more lately. Still I’m staying with bloglines b/c of the interface.

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  30. Bloglines interface is so much better then Google Reader. My stats show Bloglines holds about a 30% share of RSS readers, compared to 50% by Google. I rarely get duplicate RSS issues but they have crept more and more lately. Still I’m staying with bloglines b/c of the interface.

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  31. Pingback: Paul’s Journal » Blog Archive » in reply to “bloglines sucks”

  34. Not really. Bloglines have been my favorite for long( since 2003). Its far better than all even netvibes, which I feel more geeky than google-reader. There are many bloglines features that are yet to come to google-reader or netvibes.

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  35. Not really. Bloglines have been my favorite for long( since 2003). Its far better than all even netvibes, which I feel more geeky than google-reader. There are many bloglines features that are yet to come to google-reader or netvibes.

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  36. Robert, Paul Querna at Bloglines pointed out a bug in how we’re doing stats tracking in the feed that’s causing this problem. We’re getting it fixed up on the WordPress.com-side right away. It was a problem we introduced, not Bloglines, who’s just working as they have for years now.

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  37. Robert, Paul Querna at Bloglines pointed out a bug in how we’re doing stats tracking in the feed that’s causing this problem. We’re getting it fixed up on the WordPress.com-side right away. It was a problem we introduced, not Bloglines, who’s just working as they have for years now.

    Like

  38. Awesome job, Robert.

    You’ve got both Bloglines and WordPress.com alerted and their representatives commented here. Just awesome. 🙂

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  39. Pingback: Bloglines doesn’t suck « Scobleizer — Tech geek blogger

  40. Awesome job, Robert.

    You’ve got both Bloglines and WordPress.com alerted and their representatives commented here. Just awesome. 🙂

    Like

  43. Google Reader doesn’t just work for me. Yes, I’ve tried it, when Bloglines fell off and stopped updating one weekend. It imported my OPML file just fine, but trying to get caught back up when you’re reading 1000 feeds is a bitch. Especially when you think that you’re almost done reading a folder and Google then proceeds to keep scrolling more new stuff at you. No demarcation of when I’ve stopped reading on one feed and started another. No real numbers, just 100+ or 1000+. No (obvious) way of collapsing feeds, and no (obvious) way to mark a folder read. Stuff that I scrolled by that was still marked as new (which was the most frustrating). Hell, I don’t even like the beta Bloglines. Go figure. And I get updates on articles on those feeds that I want.

    I can understand the frustration. You just choose the wrong target.

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  44. Google Reader doesn’t just work for me. Yes, I’ve tried it, when Bloglines fell off and stopped updating one weekend. It imported my OPML file just fine, but trying to get caught back up when you’re reading 1000 feeds is a bitch. Especially when you think that you’re almost done reading a folder and Google then proceeds to keep scrolling more new stuff at you. No demarcation of when I’ve stopped reading on one feed and started another. No real numbers, just 100+ or 1000+. No (obvious) way of collapsing feeds, and no (obvious) way to mark a folder read. Stuff that I scrolled by that was still marked as new (which was the most frustrating). Hell, I don’t even like the beta Bloglines. Go figure. And I get updates on articles on those feeds that I want.

    I can understand the frustration. You just choose the wrong target.

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  45. Sorry everyone, we were working on some new stats features and the Bloglines effect was unforseen. We just fixed it by removing the element that caused Bloglines subscribers to see unchanged posts appear as updated items.

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  46. Sorry everyone, we were working on some new stats features and the Bloglines effect was unforseen. We just fixed it by removing the element that caused Bloglines subscribers to see unchanged posts appear as updated items.

    Like

  47. I am using Bloglines and it is the best reader. Google reader UI – just dont like it, but I don’t do iPhone or Facebook, so I guess I can’t be trusted.

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  48. I am using Bloglines and it is the best reader. Google reader UI – just dont like it, but I don’t do iPhone or Facebook, so I guess I can’t be trusted.

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  49. Looking back, no wonder I’ve set some blogs to ignore updates this week. I already had you “ignored”. 😉 Have no clue as to why. So it wasn’t a biggie for me anyway.

    I’m just surprised at the number of Bloglines readers there are. The 200 limit should also be a limit for Beta Bloglines, as that’s the limit in the backend. I don’t run into that as a problem except for my torrent feeds, which have become pretty much useless at this point regardless of reader. Just way too much to go through and weed out what I may want.

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  50. Looking back, no wonder I’ve set some blogs to ignore updates this week. I already had you “ignored”. 😉 Have no clue as to why. So it wasn’t a biggie for me anyway.

    I’m just surprised at the number of Bloglines readers there are. The 200 limit should also be a limit for Beta Bloglines, as that’s the limit in the backend. I don’t run into that as a problem except for my torrent feeds, which have become pretty much useless at this point regardless of reader. Just way too much to go through and weed out what I may want.

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  51. SHAME ON YOU Robert Scoble. You’re juvenile, irresponsible, completely self-centered and, what’s perhaps the most pathetic: you’ve shown you know jack about technology.

    JUVENILE:
    It’s simply brat-ish to insult someone simply because they’re having a technical issue.

    IRRESPONSIBLE:
    Not only did you not verify that the issue was due to Bloglines, you actually use a nasty post title, which is rather vile for a number of reasons:

    1/ considering the impact your blog posts have (at least until you ruin your reputation by repeating such actions)

    2/ given how blog posts show up in various readers and all around the Net, most people are never going to see anything more than the title.

    SELF-CENTERED:
    So it turns out that it’s not Blogline’s fault. OK – everyone is entitled to a mistake or a hissy-fit like yours. That’s when you should APOLOGIZE and try to rectify the harm you’ve done. Instead what do we get:

    “Sorry for the stink, but I needed to force the issue because I was losing readers over on Bloglines.”

    A half-baked 4 word apology which took you less time to write than the actual post AND not only do you seek to justify yourself, you want us to feel like you’re the one who suffered the hardship of losing readers. BFD as though readers are going to volitize simply because they couldn’t get your feed for a moment.

    YOU’RE A TECH WRITER?! LOL
    The irony of it all is that as someone who is supposed to know something about new media technology, in condemning Bloglines with the reasoning of ‘my feeds work in GR and they don’t in Bloglines, therefore Bloglines is at fault’ you’ve shown that you understand very little about how software and web services operate.

    The worst of it is that you’re one of the most (if not the most) widely-read individual blogger, and what you’ve done here is given blogging a bad name by showing so little responsibility in publishing a rash, false and damaging post AND without even a proper apology or retraction after the fact.

    And you’re worried about losing a few readers because of a technical glitch?!? I’d be far more worried about losing readers over this kind of juvenile behavior and demonstration over how little you’ve mastered the technology you write about.

    Note:
    I’m a Google Reader user and I’ve never used any other reader because GR has worked wonderfully for me so far.

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  52. SHAME ON YOU Robert Scoble. You’re juvenile, irresponsible, completely self-centered and, what’s perhaps the most pathetic: you’ve shown you know jack about technology.

    JUVENILE:
    It’s simply brat-ish to insult someone simply because they’re having a technical issue.

    IRRESPONSIBLE:
    Not only did you not verify that the issue was due to Bloglines, you actually use a nasty post title, which is rather vile for a number of reasons:

    1/ considering the impact your blog posts have (at least until you ruin your reputation by repeating such actions)

    2/ given how blog posts show up in various readers and all around the Net, most people are never going to see anything more than the title.

    SELF-CENTERED:
    So it turns out that it’s not Blogline’s fault. OK – everyone is entitled to a mistake or a hissy-fit like yours. That’s when you should APOLOGIZE and try to rectify the harm you’ve done. Instead what do we get:

    “Sorry for the stink, but I needed to force the issue because I was losing readers over on Bloglines.”

    A half-baked 4 word apology which took you less time to write than the actual post AND not only do you seek to justify yourself, you want us to feel like you’re the one who suffered the hardship of losing readers. BFD as though readers are going to volitize simply because they couldn’t get your feed for a moment.

    YOU’RE A TECH WRITER?! LOL
    The irony of it all is that as someone who is supposed to know something about new media technology, in condemning Bloglines with the reasoning of ‘my feeds work in GR and they don’t in Bloglines, therefore Bloglines is at fault’ you’ve shown that you understand very little about how software and web services operate.

    The worst of it is that you’re one of the most (if not the most) widely-read individual blogger, and what you’ve done here is given blogging a bad name by showing so little responsibility in publishing a rash, false and damaging post AND without even a proper apology or retraction after the fact.

    And you’re worried about losing a few readers because of a technical glitch?!? I’d be far more worried about losing readers over this kind of juvenile behavior and demonstration over how little you’ve mastered the technology you write about.

    Note:
    I’m a Google Reader user and I’ve never used any other reader because GR has worked wonderfully for me so far.

    Like

  57. So you feel justified in causing Bloglines to lose users for something that’s WordPress’s fault just to keep yourself from losing readers?

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  58. So you feel justified in causing Bloglines to lose users for something that’s WordPress’s fault just to keep yourself from losing readers?

    Like

  61. Let me join the growing concensus, Scoble:

    Scobleizer sucks

    Hey, Scobleizer, I don’t really care who’s problem it is, but it seems more and more posts sound as if the blogger was an incompetent, overhyped perfson. It works just fine with smart people, and doesn’t work with you. So, the only conclusion I’m going to come to: Scobleizer sucks. Please fix before everyone switches to reading books.

    UPDATE: Apparently, it was a bug in WordPress, their snakiness filter was down. They are working on fixing it. Sorry for the stink, but I needed to force the issue because I was losing IQ points over on Scobleizer.

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  62. Let me join the growing concensus, Scoble:

    Scobleizer sucks

    Hey, Scobleizer, I don’t really care who’s problem it is, but it seems more and more posts sound as if the blogger was an incompetent, overhyped perfson. It works just fine with smart people, and doesn’t work with you. So, the only conclusion I’m going to come to: Scobleizer sucks. Please fix before everyone switches to reading books.

    UPDATE: Apparently, it was a bug in WordPress, their snakiness filter was down. They are working on fixing it. Sorry for the stink, but I needed to force the issue because I was losing IQ points over on Scobleizer.

    Like

  63. Pingback: Bloglines DOESN’T suck. The dynamics and power of WOM and blogging | Secure Software Engineering Blog

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