How to Use Feedly to Stay on Top of All Your RSS Feeds

Google Reader is one of the most popular online feed aggregators out there, and with so many people using it I just had to check it out.  I’ve had feeds in Google Reader but never really checked them.  I mainly stayed up to date on all of my feeds through my startpage – NetVibes.  Eventually NetVibes became a little mundane and Google Reader was no better.  I, like so many others, am not a big fan of perusing text filled web pages, I need graphics to break up the monotony of all the text.

To be honest, I’m not quite sure how I came across Feedlybut when I did it was love at first sight.  Basically Feedly is Firefox add-on that presents all of your feeds from Google Reader in a easy to view “magazine-style” page.  Feedly is simple, and easy to use.  If you currently use Google Reader making the move to Feedly couldn’t be easier, just download the Firefox plugin, login with your Google account info and that’s it.  Since discovering Feedly I have added a heap more feeds to read since it’s so easy to add them (the same as you would add a feed to Google Reader).  If you’re someone who had a lot of feeds that update daily you can appreciate the importance of having an organized and pleasant method of viewing them all.

As you can probably imagine Feedly does much more than make my feeds pretty.  What other features drew me to Feedly?

Shareability:

Feedly allows me to share what I’m reading directly from the site.  Currently you are provided with the options of sharing via Twitter, e-mail (Gmail), FriendFeed, Facebook, Posterous, and Google Reader.  You can even save articles to Evernote send it to your Ping.fm account or save it to your Instapaper account.  If you don’t have any of those accounts (what rock have you been living under?) you can also save the article on Feedly allowing you to access it to read later. (I have to note here, Google has come a long way in making it easier to share content from Google Reader but that’s still not enough to bring me back)

Customization:

The infinite view customization options allows you to change the view and layout of all pages, have different views for different feeds and set a color scheme for your feeds.  The preference page is packed full of options to make Feedly most productive for you.  The ability to designate favorite feeds as well as which feeds appear on your homepage is yet another bonus.

All in one window:

You also have the option to view source articles in a pop up preview window allowing you to remain in Feedlyeliminating desktop or browser clutter.

One Stop shop for social network updates:

Now I know in a previous post I referred to FriendFeed as a “one-stop shop” for social network updates but with the incorporation of Twitter and FriendFeed, Feedly has taken that title.  On your Feedly page you get the most updated tweets from your Twitter account as well as updates from your FriendFeed account, allowing you to not only update your status but also check out what other people are doing.

Feedly Mini:

Feedly also provides an option to add any page with an RSS feed to your account directly from the page.  There are two ways of going about adding a page, you can click on the direct link in the address bar or your can use FeedlyMini.  FeedlyMini is a mini toolbar which shows up on the bottom of pages (according to your preference you can have it show up on no pages, all pages with RSS feeds or only pages that have ‘interesting’ content), not only can you add a page to Feedly from it’s mini toolbar but you can also see any conversations going on that are referring to the page you are viewing, for example, if someone commented on the page in their FriendFeed or on Twitter the conversation would show up in FeedlyMini.  The ability to choose the location of the mini toolbar and when it appears or not is dictated by you and your preferences.

Feedly goes where you go:

If you use multiple computers (like I do, one at home and one at work) and you have Firefox and Feedlyinstalled on both of them you can access Feedly on both computers.  Also, since Feedly accesses your Google Reader account, any changes you make to Google Reader are immediately reflected in Feedly.

Why this is only a Firefox add-on I don’t know (although it does give you one more good reason to make the switch to Firefox).  I currently have it set as my home page and reference it regularly throughout my day. Feedly has made it so much easier for me to share interesting articles quickly through Twitter and email (which is why, if you’re following me on Twitter, you’ve probably noticed a lot of posts with the ending of (via feedly) lately).  The ease of use Feedly provides has gotten me back into utilizing feeds to stay on top of important updates.  As a blogger (especially when your content is about technology) it is important to be able to stay updated throughout the day on all the news, announcements and rumors circulating, one feature I would love to see implemented in Feedly is real-time updating.  While they are close (it only takes a quick press of the reload button the update your feeds) the ability to continuously leave Feedly open and have it update automatically would be priceless.  Overall, if you subscribe to multiple feeds, like to read them on a daily basis and would like a change from the typical feed reader interface give Feedly a try, you won’t regret it.