It’s about time that Google gave its feedreader an update, and I think some of the features it has added are pretty good, although I’m not sure I would go so far as to call it “stunning”, as Richard MacManus at Read/Write Web does. It is pretty slick, though. It handled the importing of my OPML file just fine, and I like the fact that it marks items read as you scroll past them.
The sharing is not a bad idea either, and I like the way you can incorporate shared items into a blog widget, as Peter Upfold has done here. But maybe I’m just not cut out for the pure “river of news” approach, as Dave Winer calls it. I’ve tried just about every feed reader out there, including Bloglines and Newsgator and Rojo and Live Bookmarks, and I’m still kind of partial to Netvibes.com.
I like the way I can see about 20 different feeds in a single glance, with five or six headlines per feed, and can mark each individual one read with a single click (which reinforces the fact that I think headline writing has become even more important than it already was, but I digress). The new Google Reader is definitely an improvement, but I think I’ll stick with Netvibes for now, even if Paul says the new Reader rocks.