Google Reader Shutdown Causes Problems for Possible Replacements

The long-awaited, and sometimes feared, departure of Google’s (News - Alert) RSS reader has caused problems for the companies that are trying to step into the void left. Feedly, which is one of the most popular replacement choices, has been showing “over capacity” to its users far too often lately. Flipboard (News - Alert) has been having issues that will have an alert pop up that says “no content.” Both of these issues are likely stemming from the fact that the services are getting flooded with users.

Google had announced that that they were going to be shutting down their reader three months before they actually shut it down. This was supposed to be a courtesy for their users, as well as developers looking to create alternatives. Google is also offering a Takeout tool, which will be online until July 15. This particular tool offers a way to export users’ lists of RSS feeds as an OPML file. That file makes it quite a bit easier to import the Google reader files into other RSS readers.

Feedly saw quite a bit of problems right after Google shut off at 8 am BST. Feedly commented that they would be working hard to make sure that these kinds of problems didn’t occur again. The service doesn’t currently offer the ability to import OPML files but that functionality is expected to be added to the site soon.

Flipboard had originally promised that the move from Google Reader would be painless, but users began getting messages that there was no new content or no content at all shortly after the Google Reader shutdown. When the problems arose, Flipboard said that it needed to have some time for its systems to adjust.

These problems might be good news for services like Digg and AOL. Digg’s reader service is quite a bit more basic than the others but it reported no problems like the others. AOL (News - Alert) is still in the process of rolling its service out. While being behind the others in release time might have been a problem, the service will now roll out right about the time when these overload problems won’t be an issue.