iGoogle gets facelift, for the worse
My start page of choice is iGoogle, which was reviewed here earlier in the year. I’ve been using iGoogle since it was released and didn’t even have a real name, and loved it. My love changed about 10 minutes ago when Google did an update to the page, changing the pleasing top navigation for tabbed pages to left sidebar navigation with a + / – button to see the site feeds in text format, but not recent articles. Take a look:
That’s how my iGoogle page looks currently. Sadly, the tabbed names are now cut-off, the last one should read Photography / Art, it doesn’t. Furthermore, this new sidebar eats up 128 pixels of space. Reading article titles when the + is expanded is a joke and it’s now wasted space. I’m angry, real angry. This sucks. Google, give me my horizontal tab navigation back!
The only attractive thing to the new update is the rounded edges, which is so 2006 already.
Update: It seems the real purpose for this update is to integrate Google Reader with iGoogle and, possibly, become your bookmarks portion instead of storing them in your browser. Seems if you click the blog name from the left side, the content from the RSS feed loads, as seen here:
Here’s the other really crappy part, Google has added in content to my tabs that I didn’t have there before! I never had movies or The New York Times in my iGoogle, now I have to go through and edit their crap out, Google, I hope you are listening because I’m loosing my trust.
From a user perspective, it’s not terrible I suppose, but I still would much rather read an article on the original website than a stand alone reader which is why I never used Google Reader. From a blogger’s perspective, this is horrible. If you choose to publish your whole RSS feed, you have now have potentially lost unique visitors to your site, they can read it all right here in iGoogle. Additionally, .htaccess pages used to help prevent people from hotlinking graphics means that your article that has photos in it won’t display properly, as is the case now with my blog.
As a blogger, I need to seriously consider if I want to continue to publish full articles via my RSS feed or just snippets and have the reader come to my site to read it all. What’s more fair? What serves the reader the best? As a reader, what’s better for you?
7 Comments
It sucks. I hate when software or web designers assume that everyone wants the exact same thing.
I’ve never used iGoogle, so I’m missing something. Can’t you just replace iGoogle in “If you choose to publish your whole RSS feed, you have now have potentially lost unique visitors to your site, they can read it all right here in iGoogle.” with “RSS Reader X”? If you have a full feed and I subscribe in Google Reader, I will read it… did iGoogle do things differently? (I also can’t understand why someone would prefer reading articles on the original site rather than a reader, but that’s just me.)
As for the question: I rarely *unsubscribe* from a feed because it’s partial, but unless the excerpt is really interesting I just don’t click the link. If I realize I never click the links, I unsubscribe.
The way I see it, it depends on what you want: numbers or people reading what you write? If you want your stats counter to go crazy, put a partial feed and be prepared for pissed off people (but potentially more profit); if you want to keep your readers happy, be ready to lose some potential money. But I suppose you knew that
As a reader of blogs in general, I will always prefer full feeds.
You are also right regarding wanting people to read what I (or any blogger) writes, the offset to that is nearly all blogs are funded by advertisers. More views to the actual site = more money from advertisers, most people don’t advertise via RSS or do it very sparingly, which makes it more appealing to a reader because they don’t have to sift through ads to get to the content. It’s a two sided sword.
I read about a site on John Chow today called http://www.43marks.com – its like Igoogle but better cuz you can add you own bookmarks and the bookmarks can be websites not just gadgets and RSS feeds although you can upload your favorite RSS feeds too. Its free and totally customizable. Plus you don’t have to login to see your bookmars and RSS feeds