23 Mobile Things #4: Keeping Up

I first encountered Zite back in those dark days when we learned that Google Reader was shutting down and that we'd need to find other ways to read our RSS feeds. As Google Reader had done pretty much everything I'd needed an RSS reader to do, I wasn't thrilled. It's one thing to go off and explore new apps in a spirit of curiosity, quite another to be forced to find an adequate substitute for something you were satisfied with. So admittedly, I wasn't in the best frame of mind when I tested Zite back then, and it wasn't the one I settled on. Instead, I chose Feedly, which went and redesigned itself to be more like Google Reader, incorporating the features I'd liked about Google Reader.

But time has passed, and if I was no longer feeling pressured to move to Zite, maybe I'd like it more. Perhaps they'd added something I'd like; apps are always being redesigned. Plus, it made sense to continue working with something I had some familiarity with rather than install still yet another app for this Thing. This time around, I've decided that even though Zite does have some good features, it's not enough to persuade me to switch.

One of Zite's strengths is its system for finding new reading material based on what you liked and didn't like of what you've already read. You vote on stories, mark topics as favorites: it was simple to figure out and intuitive to do. I want to make it clear that I think that's a great feature, just not what I personally am looking for in an RSS reader at this time. I already have a number of blogs and other sources that I follow, and I'm so far behind on reading them that I will never catch up (ack!). On top of that, friends and strangers are constantly posting interesting articles to Facebook and Twitter. I can't keep up with all that—I don't want my RSS reader finding even more stuff for me to fall behind on! (Feedly has this feature as well. It's not as easy to use, as I recall, but since I don't use it, that's not a problem.)

And then there's the magazine-style layout: "You'll get all the benefit of our powerful technology wrapped in a beautiful design that is a joy to pick up every day." I'm sure many people love it, but I find it a chaotic mess, and it mostly leaves me wanting to shut the app down rather than read anything. Feedly also has a magazine layout—that's probably the default—but it wasn't difficult to switch it to a list of article titles, grouped by the categories I chose. If there's a way to do that in Zite, easy or hard, I have yet to find it. I like Feedly's mass deletion feature, where I can swipe and mark an entire page as read. Or I can just swipe over individual stories, leaving others for later. And Feedly syncs with a website I can access from my desktop computer, for those times when I have a few minutes to read at my desk. Not Zite.

Which sums up my feelings overall: not Zite. Blog post written, I'm off to delete it from my iPad. Again.