Google Closing RSS Feed Reader

 My RSS feed has been an important part of how I keep up with my friends, and with Internet life in general, for years now. I like Google products (I use Google chrome, g-mail, and am on Google Plus), and I also use the Google RSS Reader. I went into shock yesterday morning when I saw that as of July 1st, 2013,that reader will no longer be available! There was a note that I could download my info, so I did that. Still wasn't sure what I was going to do with it.

This am I found an article (on my RSS feed!) by MaAnna Stephenson of Blog Aid. I love her work - she does tutorials on Word Press and so much more! She takes the geek world down to the level that a non-techie like me can understand what is going on without being totally insulted. In this article she gives us the background on Google's decision to shut down their reader ... which in a way ticked me off (the decision to shut it down, not her article!). It seems to be going along with Facebook's changes in their news feed. 

An interesting side note - MaAnna is encouraging us to get our profiles up on Author Rank - something that I have already done. I got busy on that when it first came out, because I had a feeling that it was going to be important, even if I didn't see why. And I knew that it would take me a while to do,with my minimal techie skills. And it did. Well, not too long, but longer than it probably should have!  

The good news is ... MaAnna is going to be holding a free webinar on setting up MailChimp, the only free RSS to e-mail service available. I am going to set up MailChimp, and see how that works. (Crossing fingers.) Hey - I have until July 1st, when the Google Reader shuts down! 

There are valuable free reports on MaAnna's Blog Aid site on alternatives to Feedburner (the Google Reader Feed), and on using MailChimp. Blog Aid Resources. 

Off to try and make sense of all of this!

(c) March 2013 Bonnie Cehovet