Goodbye Google Reader and Feedburner

I'm sure by now you've all heard that Google Reader is about to go the way of the dinosaurs and be extinct in a few months.

Over the years I've subscribed to a lot of blogs and Google Reader was an easy way to keep up with them all (of course I did that from my iGoogle homepage...which is also soon be gone *sigh*)

A few of the blogs I follow tossed out some recommendations on replacements for the Google Reader and I made a quick choice to go with Feedly...for now. I signed up (it's nice and free!) and within a few minutes all my Google Reader feeds were integrated. So far, I like it.

I'm sure there are others, I've heard Bloglovin is another one that people seem to like.

As soon as I got my feeds squared away and I was happy again in blogland, another hitch came my way. My Feedburner counter which has been steadily going up over the last month (thank you and welcome to all my new readers!) now reads a big fat ZERO.

So, off I go to Bing, since I'm a little annoyed at the moment at Google, to research why I've suddenly lost all my subscribers. According to those in the know about such things, I haven't actually lost anyone...but feedburner just isn't counting them right now. A glitch. Well, it's happened before and I don't like it! Also according to this information, Feedburner is another Google product that they just aren't maintaining and is probably headed in the same direction as Google Reader.

Makes me wonder how long Blogger will be around?

With my Feedburner subscriber chicklet flashing that big fat ZERO and making me crazy, I went off again on Bing to find a free alternative (because I'm all about free!) and I found Feedcat! So far it looks like a good service, also offering all the usual ways to subscribe to my blog feed and also offers an email subscription option - yay!

If you subscribed to my feed before, and want to make sure we haven't lost touch, I hope you'll consider hitting that "subscribe" button on the right sidebar!

As of today, I'm down two Google products, not sure how I'm feeling as I've always been a Google-girl. Maybe a little let down? But, change is good and I'll be ok.

How about you? Do you have a favorite source to read your blog feeds?