Life after Google Reader: Rolio, the only social aggregator you need
Updated with quotes from Rolio
Google will be retiring Google Reader on July 1st 2013. Long time aficionados are exploring options to see which feed reader they will use instead of Google Reader. Some brands were quick to capitalise on the news. Feedly gathered 500k users soon after the announcement.
There are several alternatives to Reader and your choice will be based on how you already use Google Reader. A lot of them are basic RSS feed aggregators. But what about if you need more than just basic?
Start-up Rolio, founded in 2012 looks like it will satisfy folks who want more than just basic RSS in their feed client. You can save your Reader feeds using Google Takeout and import them to Rolio. Rolio integrates with Twitter and Facebook to incorporate social feeds into your main stream.
You can add news feeds from a pre-defined list from categories such as Business & Finance, Politics, Science, Technology and Travel or you can add your own feed by adding the RSS URL to the dialog box. Organising feeds into groups helps you organise the publishers that are relevant to your topic.
You can categorise your feeds -- either by dragging the icon to the section or hovering over the gear wheel on the right hand side of the post and adding it from there.
"Rolio differs from Tweetdeck by offering native support for RSS integration - the reaction to the closure of Google Reader has shown us that RSS content aggregation is still incredibly popular"
New articles appear in your feed automatically, you do not need to refresh the page. You can search the contents of the feed in the search box.
If you want to zone in on a publisher, just click the icon to see all posts from that publisher.
You can also subscribe to Twitter and Facebook from within Rolio and share tweets from the main feed.
There is no feature to respond or edit tweets -- after all this is a feed aggregator, not a Twitter or Facebook client.
It is different from the other readers as it allows users to 'slice and dice their data as they see fit' according to Myuran Balendran, Director of Rolio.
Unsubscribing from feeds is easy too using the cog icon to the right of the post. Trending topics also appear on your dashboard -- in case you have missed something in your feed stream.
In addition to the iOS mobile application, Rolio will simultaneously be launching for both Android and Windows Phone 7.
The application is currently in the final stages of development and is set for release in June 2013.A Windows 8 application will follow soon according to Balendran.
This is a good alternative to Google Reader -- made even better when you add your social feeds to the stream. Careful management of groups and categorising your news feeds will filter out the signal to noise ratio and help you refine what is important to you.
It will be interesting to see whether this start-up will continue to gain fans after Google Reader closes its electronic doors. For those wanting an easy way to access the news topics and blogs we love, Rolio certainly leads the way.