Why Johnny Can’t Reader

I don’t know how many of my readers use Google Reader, but any that do I’m sure have by now seen the popup message telling us that it will be discontinued.  I asked a good friend who works at Google (he’s on the Chrome OS team, so he’s not always a good source of information for things aside of the browser itself) why they had discontinued Google Reader.  He said that use was on decline and that many people use Twitter, and he uses Google+.

Well, I don’t use Twitter that much.  I find it’s like being in a room surrounded by a bunch of people with no personal filters talking all the time.  I can’t track the conversations.

Then there’s Google+.  It’s just not the good stream of information that I want.  I like being able to pick through the section of material that I read.  Google+ is, once again, a stream of consciousness.

So, I began looking for an alternative.  Yes I've got a little over three months, but I want to have something I’m happy with when the transition deadline hits.

I read an article on Lifehacker and then an article on Gizmodo.  So after reading those, I have decided to throw my first lot to The Old Reader.  It has the ability to link with my Google account to sign in, and then I tried to import my data from Google Reader.  Yesterday, they were swamped with import requests, and had to disable the feature.  This morning, there was an option to upload an XML file from my Google files.
If you’re in need of transferring your data, give this a shot:

First do the suggested XML download from Google Reader.  This will come in a ZIP file that you'll need to extract to a folder.

Then go to Old Reader and using the import page, upload the XML file.

Right now, I got this message, "Thank you for uploading your OPML file. We will soon start importing your subscriptions, which might take up to several hours depending on the amount of feeds you have.

There are 22218 users in the import queue ahead of you."

Why it says OPML, I don't know, but the XML file is what I used for the import.

I say good luck to you.  While I’ve writing this, my number has dropped to 22217.