Data Firmware

Feedly vs Inoreader my thoughts part 2

Note: This is Part 2 in my humble series, as I agonize over whether to commit to Feedly or Inoreader as my RSS reader of choice. See Part 1, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5 if youre interested. 

Revisiting Feedly vs. Inoreader

Its been a few months since my last post on this topic, so I thought Id revisit these two fine products. I think Ill just cut to the chase this time:

While I like that Feedly has upped its search features for free users, Inoreader continues to innovate also, doing things Ive really wanted to see in a feed reader. For me, two things have stuck out since last time: difficulty parsing smaller feeds, and Twitter integration.

Issue 1 : Smaller feeds : The case of r/Lubuntu

Im a big fan of Reddit, but a bigger fan of RSS. So its not surprising that I subscribe to multiple Reddit RSS feeds. I peruse them in my feed reader, and if I care to see (or make) a comment, I click-through to the Reddit thread itself. Normally, this works great on both Feedly and Inoreader. No problems.

But, for smaller subreddits, it becomes an issue. Heres an example. Im a huge fan of Lubuntu, so naturally I subscribe to the r/Lubuntu RSS feed. Heres what it looks like:

Raw feed data for r/Lubuntu, in Firefox

Im showing you this because, have a look at this raw feed data for r/Lubuntu (as displayed here in Firefox). Notice the most recent entries, the latest being 11/06/2014 10:12 AM. Thats just a few hours ago.

Now, lets compare how r/Lubuntu looks in both Feedly and Inoreader. I took all these screen-shots just minutes ago:

r/Lubuntu on Feedly

Here you can see that, even after a few page refreshes, Feedlys articles for this feed are wildly out of date, the last being 162 days old. At some point, it seems Feedly just stopped polling this feed. Thats a problem, as it means I missed over a hundred days of posts.

Notice also that Im not the only RSS subscriber for this feed: 5 others are presumably having the same issue. OK, so were not a huge contingent by any means, but I think one of the joys of RSS is not having to worry that were missing articles. We know that each and every post will show up in our reading list. If items start going missing, and we have to visit the site itself just for updates, then it defeats the point of RSS.

Now lets see what it looks like in Inoreader:

r/Lubuntu on Inoreader

Here you can see that even the most recent post, along with each and every other recent post, is accounted for. Compare these posts to the raw feed data, and youll see everything at it should be. Inoreader blows Feedly out of the water in this example. For reliability, I have to give it to them.

Note that Inoreader has alerted me to something wrong with this feed. Unfortunately, I cant share with you what that is. I refreshed the page, and the error disappeared. Checking the "Feed Info" (a nice option, missing in Feedly) no longer indicates any error. Ive spent a few minutes unsubscribing/resubscribing, trying to recreate the error, but no luck. Note also that, in clicking the manual feed "refresh" icon, Inoreader polls Reddit immediately (and this info is reflected in the feed info section). Feedly, meanwhile, appears to have removed their feed refresh icon from the gear menu.

So, its possible that Feedly is suffering from whatever issue it was that Inoreader had faced. Yet its hard to argue with the results: Inoreaders got the items there, Feedly doesnt.

If you read Part 1 of this series, youd know that this unreliability with smaller feeds was an issue for me several months ago. I have to admit, I have noticed better performance with Feedly since then on many of the problematic feeds. This was just one example of an area where Inoreader wins overall. The real trouble, to me, is that I cant be sure which of my Feedly feeds arent updating or arent working, short of manually opening each and every feed in Feedly, then opening the raw feed, and comparing dates. Aint nobody got time for that.

Issue 2 : Twitter Integration

I dont think I need any screen-shots for this (though you can see my Twitter feed just visible there in the shot above), and its quite self-explanatory, so Ill be as brief as possible. I absolutely love that Inoreader has integrated Twitter into the normal feed stream. Feedly had that side-bar Twitter integration, which felt, to me, very cluttered and distracting. I shut it off ages ago and never bothered to turn it back on.

Before Twitter changed their API, I had subscribed to most Twitter accounts via RSS. When the API changed and public RSS feeds were removed, I felt a hole in my consumption habit. One of the beauties of RSS is that it brings everything together, in a simple, uniform style. I think Inoreader hit the mark very well with their integration, treating my Twitter Home Timeline as a feed.

I think the only way it could be improved is if each person I follows tweets were arranged into their own "feed" and my Home Timeline (or even better, my Twitter Lists) were treated as a feed group or "Folder".

Final thoughts 

Honestly, I still havent chosen a single reader, and keep floating between the two. Im very happy that Feedly has added mobile tagging (and I can view my tagged articles on mobile, which to me personally is more important than the act of tagging). But Inoreaders steady stream of adding new features, with G+ support recently added, has had me hooked for the last few days.

Both are great services with great products. This post isnt meant to disparage anyone. If anything, I hope it draws attention to a few issues I think are important in the world of RSS feed readers. And anyway, Im just one guy with a shitty little blog. What do I know?

Thanks for reading, and for more of my comparisons, see this series Part 1, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5 if youre interested. 

Get

Feedly vs Inoreader my thoughts part 1

Note: This is Part 1 in my humble series, as I agonize over whether to commit to Feedly or Inoreader as my RSS reader of choice. See Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5 if youre interested. 



When Google Reader died, I was heartbroken. Luckily, like a rebound lover, Feedly was there to pick up the pieces and make me feel all warm and safe. However, as time has gone on, Feedly has started to seem to lose interest in me, pushing me into the arms of another lover: Inoreader.

Basically it comes down to one key point: each RSS readers treatment of "small time" feeds. What I mean are those feeds that are maybe not updated very often, such as once a month or once every two months, and those feeds with very few subscribers (including, but not limited to, feeds for which I might be the sole subscriber).

Examples of what I mean include:

• Reddit subreddits that have just a few new posts each month
• Blogger and Wordpress comment feeds (subscribing via RSS to new comments on specific posts)
• Sourceforge application update feeds
• Craigslist search results feeds
• Blogs of some personal friends

I first started noticing that Feedly was dropping these feeds when Id get curious about some sites, sites that I knew had updated, not showing up in my Feedly. Visiting the feed from within Feedly indicated no new material, even after manual refreshing. Yet a quick visit to the feed URL itself confirmed my fears: the feed was updated, and nearly a month ago, with two new items. Feedly totally missed them. Had I relied purely on Feedly to deliver my news, I would never have seen them. That, to me, is a big problem.

Putting them to the test: Inoreader on top

So Ive tried out Inoreader for the last two weeks. Basically, I pared down my subscribed feeds, cleared them all out, then started fresh on both services by importing the same OPML file into both, and watching the results.

After two weeks of this, it became clear: many of my "smaller" feeds were being ignored by Feedly. One or two had "feed issues" (the Reddit feeds) according to Inoreaders informative subscription management pane, but were nonetheless being fetched by Inoreader.

Here you can see the relative fetching speed of each service. I erased all my subscriptions, loaded a fresh OPML subscription list (a smaller one than I usually use, just 20 feeds) into each service, then waited two hours. Here was the result:

Feedly

Inoreader

You can see that Inoreader did a better job of feed fetching.

Some thoughts about both: Feedlys revenge

This may seem that I am overwhelmingly in favor of Inoreader, but thats not exactly true. Im still a bit on the fence, and heres why:

1. Feedly, for better or worse, seems the dominant player in RSS feed readers, which is a small enough field not to permit too many competitors. Most Google Reader refugees originally fled to Feedly. This may change in the future (Inoreader seems right on its tail, which to me suggests that others are migrating as well), but for now Im still hesitant to leave behind the large and potentially more stable Feedly in favor of yet another newer reader.
2. Feedly is more beautiful. This may not be an important factor for some, but I personally find Feedly to be the more "readable" of the two. It feels a little more slick, a little more polished, a little more concerned with appearances. And to me, as someone who reads hundreds of feeds a day, that matters. Inoreader is not ugly by any means. Its really just a personal preference. The font, the transitions, the design, seems smoother, especially in the Android app, on Feedly than Inoreader. This may change when Inoreaders update comes out.

Additionally, although this should be unnecessary, there are a few things Ive done to improve the performance of Feedly:

1. Feedburner. Going through my subscription list, I discovered many blogs for which I was subscribed to the blogs own RSS feed (like blog.com/feed) but that the blog also has a Feedburner feed. Switching my subscription to the Feedburner feed improved Feedlys performance in fetching articles, especially infrequently-updated blogs.
2. IFTTT. For feeds that are rarely updates or unique to me, Ive found that IFTTTs "feed" channel is equal to Inoreader at fetching articles from sources quickly and accurately. Thus Ive just created IFTTT recipes for those problematic few feeds, so I now have new posts e-mailed to me. This has the fringe benefit of drawing more attention to these infrequently-appearing posts, which I might have inadvertently scrolled past in an RSS reader.

Final thoughts

After all this, I find myself leaning towards Feedly still. Ive been with them since Google Reader, and feel willing to give them one more shot. Of course, until Im more confident about the quality of their service, theres no way Im buying a pro plan, even if Id like to. Too risky to invest in a service I might soon see a need to flee from. Maybe they can change their ways, or maybe Im going back to an abusive relationship and will long to get out again soon and into the sexy seductive arms of Inoreader. Either way, its great that both of these services allow import/export of your OPML reading list, so that moving between them is fairly painless (unless you have a lot of tagged, saved articles you also want migrated, in which only Inoreader supports it.)

Expect a follow-up post in a few months.

UPDATE 2014-11-06: And the follow-up post is complete. For more of my comparisons, see this series Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5 if youre interested. 

Get