14 DAY TRIAL // WordPress.com has introduced an interesting new feature, a blog reader, a cross between Google Reader and reader apps like Flipboard. Through it, you can keep track of blogs from WordPress.com but also other places.
They don't even have to be WordPress blogs, Blogger ones work as well. In fact, any site with a RSS/Atom feed should work, you don't even have to know the feed's URL all you have to do is provide WordPress.com the URL of the site.
"If you feel like it’s a chore to keep up with all your favorite blogs, you can now read posts from all the blogs you follow (even the ones that aren’t on WordPress.com!) in one convenient place on the WordPress.com home page," WordPress.com announced.
"Your reader displays all the posts across all the blogs you follow in the order they were published, with the most recent content appearing at the top. You’ll see an excerpt of the introduction to each post, the first image in the post, and thumbnails of any other images that the post contains," it added.
All of the blogs you've subscribed to in the past are listed on the "Read Blogs" tab on the WordPress.com homepage where you can read all the posts in order.
It's a simple way of keeping track of everything from one place, without having to visit several blogs and websites. Of course, that has always been the premise of RSS feeds, but they never caught on.
The fact that the WordPress.com reader looks great is one thing going for it though. You can also discover new blogs through it. Other than that, there's not much standing out, it's a fairly standard reader app. It works on tablets too, since it's a website and there's a mobile version for smartphones as well.