What is Feedly?

First, what is a feed reader?

All feed readers are created pretty much the same way; they aggregate content, making it possible for you to quickly scan headlines and/or full stories at a glance, from a variety of different providers, all in one place. The ability to absorb, curate and use the fire hose of feed information is a huge marketplace advantage because all of the content you need is in one place, easily scannable and trackable.

You don't have to keep checking back to any particular site to see if it's been updated - all you need to do is subscribe to the RSS feed (short for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary, RSS feeds streamlines the way we search for content to read online), much like you would subscribe to a newspaper, and then read the updates from the site, delivered via RSS feeds, in what's called a "feed reader."

What happened to Google Reader?

You might have heard of Google Reader. This was one of the most popular feed readers and was discontinued July 1, 2013.

Feedly has been promoted to be a good replacement for Google Reader and offers an easy way to import all your feeds from Google Reader to Feedly in one step. The process is very simple and an interactive wizard takes you right through it. We're going to assume for the purposes of this article that you do not have Google Reader and are new to feed readers altogether.

How to get started

Starting an account at Feedly is easy – just sign up with an email address and you're all set. If you’re just now subscribing to feeds, create an account. Then, start subscribing. On the side, you’ll see a magnifying glass icon. Click on that, then add a blog by copying and pasting the URL or by just typing in the name of the blog itself, for example, “TechCrunch”.

Feedly also gives you categories you can choose to explore; click on any of these categories and featured blogs will appear that you can instantly subscribe to. Updates from these sites will then appear in your Feedly display.

Home screen

Feedly will now show you a personalized home screen with all your feeds. If you scroll down a bit, even more blogs that you have subscribed to will appear. These are all your feeds, shown by most current on top. You can organize your feeds by topic, helping you read according to what you need quickly. You can read all your blog subscriptions at one time by clicking on your folder’s name. Or, you can toggle each folder, found in the left sidebar, and you’ll see all your subscriptions listed individually. Then you can read just one blog at a time.

Organization

The way you organize your categories on the Feedly desktop navigation bar defines the order in which the categories are displayed in the today section. So if you want to re-order things to reflect your interests, go to your feedly page, drag and drop to re-order and then reload feedly. You can also organize your Feedly by clicking on the Organize link on the top left-hand corner; here, you can drag and drop categories into whatever order you want, as well as edit names of categories, delete categories, or edit and delete individual feeds.

Social options

If you click on any individual blog, you have multiple options: you can keep it as unread for another day, preview the entire article in your Feedly reader, share it via email, or share it via a multitude of social media networks from right within Feedly.

Mobile

Feedly also has a mobile app so you can read your content anywhere you go. Feeds and reading habits are synchronized across devices, so if you read something on your desktop, it will be marked as read on your mobile app as well.