Good Bye! (I’m Gonna Miss You)

At this moment, there are still a few hundred readers who receive blog updates from The Friendly Anarchist through Google Reader. Unfortunately, Google is closing this product down. If you’re still using it, you won’t get any blog updates from July 1 onwards.

I’m probably alone with this, but I think this is great news for several reasons:

  1. Google is creepy. As are most bigger tech companies. The less we depend on them, the better.
  2. By closing Reader down, Google creates great incentives for smaller companies to develop an alternative. My own preferred RSS reader, NetNewsWire, just saw its first update in about 200 billion years.
  3. It puts you back in the driving seat. How many blogs are you still subscribed to that you don’t really read or that don’t  deliver any value for you? The end of Google Reader may be the perfect opportunity to reassess your reading habits.

That said, if you still use Reader, you’ll want to move my feed to a new reader before Google pulls the plug. Here’s what I suggest you to do:

  1. Get a new reader now. I don’t need anything fancy, so I use NetNewsWire, but if you want something special (with sync and all) here’s a look at most of the alternatives.
  2. Don’t import your old feeds. There are probably too many to keep up with, anyway. Just copy those you really care about by hand… like, The Friendly Anarchist (I hope). Subscribe to my new feed here: http://www.friendlyanarchist.com/feed/
  3. No third step required. But if you’re really into friendly anarchism, you might also want to sign up for my newsletter here. I will start sending blog updates to that list from next week on, plus you’ll get extra content that doesn’t show up on the blog. Deal?

If you decide not to stay on board or to ditch RSS altogether or to leave the internet and move into a cabin in the woods, though, that is also perfectly fine. You probably can’t stand seeing people whine about this stuff anymore, either. I live 20% of my life online, so it’s not a choice for me, but it’s probably not the worst choice to make, anyway. In that case: Thanks for being here. It was a pleasure to have you and I’m sure we’ll meet again. ((Please don’t shoot any people wearing The Friendly Anarchist t-shirts if they’re trespassing your forest grounds. I probably just got lost!)) Have a great day!