I have to switch from Bloglines to Google Reader. Now I claim myself a widow of Bloglines because I think it's dead. I never thought the mishap would happen to me one day though I've seen people mourning for their lost feeds in Bloglines. Now my turn. Bloglines ruined my day. I lost all my feeds and thus had nothing to procrastinate in a positive way. Katherine suggested I can still procrastinate by putting Bloglines together all over again. What adds to my resentment is Bloglines didn't allow me to add my subscribed feeds for "You are already subscribed to that blog."

So this is the story. Last Friday I tried to move a feed to a folder I thought it might belong to better. After that, BOOM! Everything was gone in the left bar. I was praying the plumber to show up to say "we are sorry" blahblahblah but it turned to be my fantasy. Nobody in the blogosphere complained about the loss of feeds as I experienced. To offset my cognitive dissonance, I thought it might be a punishment for my being organized. Anyways, the blessing in disguise is I exported all my feeds to an OPML file a few days ago.

I just tried Google Reader and was not impressed. First of all, I had to add some feeds by hand for Google Reader can't read Chinese in the OPML. My solution is to manually subscribe to Chinese blogs and import the left ones. Second, I just got kicked out all the time and had to log into my account again and again. Whenever I want to read my feeds or subscribe to some blogs, I have to input my super long password to get it done. This might be a blessing for the sake of safety and privacy, but it is such a pain for me working on a laptop exclusively. Also, I was disappointed to find Google Toolbar doesn't include Google Reader as a default reader. I have to use the bookmarklet which requires me to sign in all the time. The last thing I want to complain is sometimes it takes forever to load.

Even so, I decide to stick to Google Reader for some neat features like sharing and starring items. I can't resist the temptation of seamless integration of Google Reader and Gmail. Also, the pictures cost less time to load than in Bloglines. I think I'll find more advantages of Google Reader.

Honestly, I didn't expect I would switch under such a circumstance. I have been bombed by positive reviews about the recent update of Google Reader. I wasn't moved that much to change my current reading habit. When I was younger, I was an adventurer who desperately tried out all new things. I used to chase after all new changes and didn't mind being a beta-tester. New features always drew my eyeballs and I jumped in without hesitation. As I age and become mature [ hopefully ], I start to calculate the risks and effort of changes to see whether the investment is worthwhile. Sometimes I make rational decisions, and sometimes I am just too lazy to dip my toes into it.

Update: When I was about to publish the post, I just found Bloglines had recovered all my feeds. Nevertheless, I'm not going back. In today's class we talked about theories of interaction. In light of Social Investment theory, there are three factors contributing to people's commitment in a relationship: satisfaction, investment, and quality of alternatives. I think these are perfect explanations for my break-up with Bloglines.