I'm Lovin' BlogLovin'!

I was looking at the stats on my blog yesterday and, in the referring websites list, I found the usual suspects -- twitter, facebook, google+ and a site I didn't know: bloglovin.com.  Curious about this mystery site, I checked it out.

Bloglovin' is a feed reader, a way to keep tabs in the blogs you like to read.  I have written before about how my teaching changed when I took a Web2.0 class that required Will Richardson's book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms.  As part of that class, I tried out some Web2.0 services, including a feed reader.  I started using GoogleReader to keep up with my many interests, but, when it was discontinued, I changed over to feedly.  When I deliver professional development about Web2.0 tools, I always talk about diigo for bookmarking and feedly for reading blog feeds, but there is something about feed readers that seems to stop people in their tracks.  And not in a good way.

Bloglovin' could change that.  It's easy to set up an account with your email or facebook account.  And bloglovin' has the tiled look of pinterest; it's visual, but clean and interesting.  It is simple to use.  Sign in and you get some hints on finding blogs to follow and how to add them to your feed.

Type the name of the blog into the search bar and you can find the blogs you like to read.  Then click the + Follow button and the blog gets added to your feed.  

On your feed page, you see the names of the blogs you follow and the number of unread posts you have for each of the blogs.

After you have clicked on and read a post, the title gets greyed out so you can visually tell which posts you have read and which ones still need attention.

You can click the Save button (a heart) to save a post so you can access it after it has been read.  

You can share a post using twitter, facebook, pinterest, or email (How about adding google+, bloglovin'?)



 
Bloglovin' has the typical bells and whistles -- search popular posts, find blogs by category, get notifications, suggested blogs based on your feeds, follow people -- but not so many bells and whistles to overwhelm new users.  It would be nice if they would add an education category and a sharing option for Google+.  If you don't already have a feed reader that you like, check out bloglovin'.  If you don't regularly read blogs, I'll recommend the ones in my reading list at the right.  They always provide me with inspiration to learn and try more.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin