14 DAY TRIAL // Google Reader, Google's web-based aggregator, becomes more and more popular but it's still not able to compete with Bloglines, another RSS feed reader which is said to be the leader of the category. According to statistics provided by Hitwise, Google Reader grew up a lot but Bloglines managed to keep up the good work and kept the leader position. Google Reader accounted no less than 0.27 percent of the total share o US Internet visits, while Bloglines reached 0.38 percent, Hitwise explains. Besides the two services, there are no real competitors on the market because Bloglines "received a 15x larger share of visits than Rojo [the next more important] last week," Heather Hopkins, VP Research of Hitwise UK, explains.
Both Google Reader and Bloglines are mostly used for news and media but, in this category, Google's feed aggregator is clearly the winner of the competition. According to Hitwise, Google Reader "sent 61 percent more visits to News and Media websites than Bloglines." Moreover, Google Reader is also an important source of visits for Social Networking and Forums but there are several categories in which Bloglines simply overcame Google's service.
For instance, Bloglines is mostly used for reading Photography feeds, Blogs and Personal Websites, as well as Shopping and Classifieds pages. According to Hitwise data, "Bloglines users are 24% more likely to continue on to a retail (Shopping & Classifieds) website."
Google Reader was first launched in October 2005 and was only a project of Google Labs, offering only a few features. Time passed by and Google Reader received a brand new interface in September 2006 but it also graduated from beta after approximately one year, in September 2007. At this time, Google Reader works pretty fine, except for a few glitches which slow down the service every once in a while.