I learned that the science to using GoogleReader was only putting news that you will be upset to miss. The more feeds and publications I added, the more there was on my agenda. Then, I was more likely to dismiss all of the news and ignore each publication. I limited it down to following Ad Age, Mashable, the Chicago Tribune, Bloomberg BusinessWeek and the Columbia Missourian daily. I also kept tabs on blogs from my previous internship in Argentina, Romenesko, Mizzou's student newspaper- The Maneater, an Orthodox Christian blog and the personal blogs and websites of all of my best friends.
The best part of the tool was that it delivered all of this into one product. I don't have to bookmark each of my friends' URLs and check it regularly, I get a notification when it's updated. This volume of news did not make my notifications number too high, so I was inclined to read each story and "star" relevant links that I would have bookmarked for the future.
Yesterday afternoon, my friend Kathryn emailed me the following screenshot that I saw moments later once I logged on.
Google Reader decided to power down because of a decline in use, claiming they want to focus on a subset of products rather than having a product for everything. I think this was an incredibly poor decision, since readers who used this were very loyal to this feed. Although people mock the fact that consumers still use RSS feeds and don't get all their news from tablets and Twitter, this type of platform shows more than news- but the personal news of bloggers and individuals who might not be present in the social sphere.
So for Google Reader buffs like me, here are some links I have found with alternatives:
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