Bloglines Beefs Up Features With Playlists

Of the 175-plus feeds I track using Bloglines, it can be daunting to look at all of them at once. They might as well be stacks of magazines piled up on my desk.

Bloglines new feature helps with this problem, allowing you to create playlists of specific feeds.

What if you have certain feeds you view only in the morning? You don't want to re-arrange your whole "My Feeds" listing just for this time of day. Playlists lets you create short groupings of feeds to access from your main list. Create them, change them, even delete them--all without changing your original "tree" of feeds. What song playlists are to your MP3 library, Bloglines Playlists are to your Bloglines blogs & feeds.

The best part of the playlist feature, in my opinion, is how it serves up feeds and their recent posts in one page view. It’s easy to set up and is a helpful way to navigate, read and organize the long list of feeds you can accumulate over time.

I realize many of you get this feed via email or use another feed reader to access this blog. But I’m posting this positive experience with Bloglines as they take a lot of heat for not keeping up with their competitors. Playlists are a small, smart step in the right direction.

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tags | Bloglines | RSS | blog

Comments

[Mike Keliher]

Aren't these "playlists" just like folders? And doesn't just about every feed reader have them?

Or maybe I'm spoiled as a new user of Google Reader? I just switched from using Firefox live feeds, which was GREAT for scanning headlines but required a lot of right-click-then-open-in-a-new-tab-and-navigate-back-to-where-you-were-within-your-feeds-folder to actually read stuff. Google Reader seems great so far. My only beef is that it occasionally - rarely - finds "no items" in a feed - like that of podcastingnews.com.

[Kevin Dugan]

Mike: I suspected the same thing after reading the initial overview. But it really is more than that. You have a separate page for each playlist. So when I am in my work playlist, every unrelated feed disappears.

Plus it serves up these feeds differently in playlists. In addition to the edited feed table of contents list in the left hand column, the playlist serves them up in the main screen with recent posts beneath each feed. When I am not in playlist, I can only view one feed in the main screen at a time. Even when multiple feeds are in a folder, you must scroll through them in order. Playlists make it much easier to get through multiple feeds at once.

You mentioned the "no feeds" factor in Google. I've noticed this in MyYahoo before.

Thanks for stopping by.

[Mike Keliher]

Interesting. I've always heard good things about Bloglines, but Google Reader is just so simple and effective, it just makes sense. I suppose Bloglines (and probably others) are great, too, but with so many players in the field of RSS readers, I'd like to find one and settle down for a while.

Keep up the good work, Kevin. I really enjoy this and the Bad Pitch Blog.

[Kevin Dugan]

Mike: Thanks for the feedback.

One item benefitting Bloglines, Google and other readers are the switching costs involved with moving to a new feed reader. If you have 100 or more feeds, or have used a feed reader for more than six months, I suspect folks would be reticent to move due to the effort required.

Google's interface is slick...much easier and more intuitive than Yahoo's. I am at a point where I want to close my current account and start fresh so I can completely reorganize. I was debating doing this on another platform, but between playlists and the pain in switching 175 feeds, I will probably not move elsewhere.

I visited your site and saw the podcast, I'm looking forward to checking it out.

[Eric Eggertson]

Kevin:

I've been shopping around for a new feed reader lately. This may entice me to stay with BlogLines for another few months.

In checking out other feed readers, I created an OPML file of my subscriptions, then imported it into the reader I was trying out. I don't remember what I used for OPML creation - I think I just clicked on Help in BlogLines, and followed the links.