Since Google announced they were shutting down Google Reader, there has been a scramble by smaller feed readers products to try and get as many people to migrate to their service. While Feedly, seems to be the biggest beneficiary, while there are still some other alternatives around. AOL has just announced a feed reader, that allows users to migrate their RSS feeds from Google Reader to AOL. Visit reader.aol.com to sign-up for the beta service.
AOL Reader is in beta, but in the hour or so I spent on it, it looks pretty stable. It has some very basic features built-in like sharing posts to some of the popular social networks.
I also saw some advertisements from AOL on a right sidebar. Personally, I am not a fan of adverts on any service I use, but the ads on AOL Reader are not much of an distraction for me to think of not using the service.
AOL Reader lacks on some fronts like there is no native Android or iOS app for the reader. This is a web only service at the moment. It also lacks integration with any 3rd party services like Flipboard which is very popular with tablet users. But I think that will change as AOL Reader already has released an API for developers.
AOL Reader is very basic and very beta at the moment. So I won’t exactly be moving away from Feedly, which is now my default Google Reader alternative for a couple of months. But it is good to see more services getting into RSS feeds. I guess RSS feeds are not going to die anytime soon.
Link: AOL Reader