New Bloglines Beta Available

Posted on August 27, 2007

Bloglines has released a beta version of its popular web-based news aggregator. The old version will continue to be available in the meantime.

The new Bloglines has an Ajax interface with three seperate views for reading feeds: a quick view (just headlines); a full view that shows the full feed; and a 3-pane view that shows headlines on the top and the full stories below. This is the 3-pane view shown in the screenshot below.

You can also customize a start page that will load your favorite feeds instantly. For more details read this comprehensive post about the Blogline beta from Read/Write Web. Read/Write Web also says more features are coming from Bloglines.

There are more features to come, as Beta Bloglines is iterated on - including new options for saving, sending and sharing posts, as well as building link blogs, managing blog rolls, etc. Also coming soon is upgraded developer APIs. One of the more exciting future features from my point of view will be Personalization Preferences, allowing users to edit a feed or settings.

Some people have been switching away from Bloglines to other readers like NetVibes and Google Reader over the past year or so. The upgrade from Bloglines was long overdue. The new reader should make people some who have left Bloglines consider returning. Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land says he is "personally strongly considering switching back to Bloglines from Google Reader."

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