Google Reader is dead. Here are five alternatives.

Google Reader should now be referred to in the past tense: the information aggregator that was.

Last March, Google announced that its once cutting-edge content organizer had become passé, and was no longer getting the traffic and attention to merit maintenance. And so, on July 1, 2013, the application ceased to exist.

The Internet giant recommends that users still interested in the tried-but-true RSS system should export their data with Google Takeout. (If nothing else, exporting your data with Google Takeout is an interesting exercise to see what information Google has accrued on you and your Internet tastes.)

But where to go with this data? Good question.

Click through our Google Reader replacement list to find out what awaits.

Google Reader is dead. Long live… 

1. Digg Reader

Digg Reader website
Digg Reader lets you organize your RSS feeds in folders.

Digg Reader is one of the new kids on the aggregator block – it was launched in June – but it’s attached to the preexisting Digg social news website.

Digg Reader’s page has a clean and simple design that allows you to import information from Google (all of your old Google Reader information!) and personalize your own news feed.

You can share on Twitter and Facebook, save articles, and check out popular trends. There is still no category for unread items, but Digg promises those features are on the way.

Is there a smart phone app? Yes. Digg Reader is compatible with iPhone and iPad. The Android app is coming soon.

Cost? Free.

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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