I recently highlighted current consumer feed reading habits but it's been awhile now since I authored the feed readers comparison for TechCrunch. The landscape has changed as products have released new features while other products have ducked out of the competition. SplashCast recently did a market analysis to produce an extensive list of feed reader options. The article, written by former TechCrunch writer Marshall Kirkpatrick, starts by focusing on feed readers handling of rich media RSS, provides insight into his top 10 favorite feed readers and concludes by California feed reader dreaming with the idea of his "dream feed reader" as follows:
"If I could piece together the various options available to me now, what I’d like is this. I’d like an online reader with the speed and media handling of Google Reader and the river of news functionality of Newsgator Online. I’d like it synced with a desktop reader that combines the stability, 3rd party tagging and river of news of NetNewsWire with the aesthetics of FeedDemon and the media handling of RSSOwl. I don’t believe that anyone has yet nailed the cross platform mobile reader that syncs with web and desktop readers. That’s subject of another post, though."
I would have to agree that all these features combined would be great but if I had to prioritize them I would say application speed/performance, organizational design elements (i.e. tagging, labels or folders) and discover tools (i.e. a recommendations engine for feeds or feed items to help me to get to the items that might interest me the most) would top my list.
