Bloglines is web-based aggregator, i.e. a feed reader service to pull article content from your favorite web sites that offered RSS feeds. PCMech in particular has been offering RSS feeds for several years now.

As of October 1, 2010, Bloglines will be shut down. As for reasons cited why Ask is shutting down the service, there are several, including that "being locked in an RSS reader makes less and less sense to people as Twitter and Facebook dominate real-time information flow".

This comes as a bit of a surprise given how many techies prefer to get web sites updates via RSS, and the fact all Twitter pages have RSS feeds – even for searches. Even though this is true, Ask is giving Bloglines the axe regardless.

How will one get feeds after Bloglines is gone?

As for feed clients, there are plenty. IE, Firefox and Safari have been able to read feeds for quite a while. Windows Live Mail and Thunderbird has RSS feed ability. Even software you wouldn’t think has feed ability has it, like iTunes and IBM Lotus Notes. Standalone software like Feed Demon and RSS Reader fit the bill quite nicely in the RSS reader department.

As for web-based however, Ask basically just handed the entire market to Google. Google Reader was the only real competitor to Bloglines.

Are they now the only choice for those that read RSS feeds on the web?

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