Feedly can’t exactly be considered a novice in the field, though it’s only since Google announced the termination of its Reader service that Feedly began to get some serious exposure. Among the few that have joined the rush to fill the void created by Google Reader’s impending annihilation on July 1, Feedly is already a stalwart, going by the 3 million subscriber base it has garnered in just the past 2 weeks. In fact, half a million have switched allegiance with Feedly in just 48 hours after Google served the termination notice to its RSS news service. Now with over 7 million active users under its belt, no wonder the company is now aiming higher, which includes a paid premium service for those who are willing to pay for a better service.
The premium version will be launched later in the year and will justify its branding with better features such as Dropbox integration and a better Evernote service. As Feedly co-founder Moutran revealed to Laura of paidcontent.org, “Feedly will emerge as a marketplace that facilitates the discovery, consumption and sharing of great content…We have been working with publishers, and intend to offer an easy way for our users to discover, purchase, and access premium content.”
Meanwhile, the company has also come up with an update for both Android and iOS to make for an even better experience using the service. On offer is a better search and discovery feature, and it is a lot easier to share on the social networking scene as well. For instance, Google+ is not well integrated and can be accessed from within the menu dropdown list itself. An Android specific update with a new layout has also been introduced and can be viewed with tablets like the Nexus 7, Nexus 10.
However, the biggest improvement (and arguably the most important one) is the enhanced search feature. With an entirely new search engine, there will be 50 million feeds that will be searched for results.
Overall, it’s good to see Feedly is being fine tuned to deliver a fast and slick user experience, something important for it to emerge as a comprehensive alternative to the Google Reader. Digg is also in the race to offer a Google Reader alternative and it will be interesting to see what it has to offer.
Sovan Mandal is the senior tablet and tech corespondent for goodereader.com. He brings a international approach to news that is not just applicable to the North American market, but also Asia, India, Europe and others. Sovy brings his own writing flavor to the website and is interested in Science Fiction, Technology and Writing. Any questions, send an email