What’s the Best RSS Reader for Rich Media?

I’m looking for a new RSS feed reader that offers good support for video, audio and photos. This post will discuss what I’ve found in that search. It’s not pretty so far. The content available in the market is moving much faster than the tools to consume it. SplashCast will play a roll in this situation, but for now I’m just looking for an RSS reader that will help me do my job efficiently at an online media company. Perhaps you are too.

The following is a discussion of the problem, then a description of the criteria I used to review 10 leading RSS readers on the market, a paragraph about each product and a chart comparing features. Features are honestly open to some interpretation and I may have missed some important vendors, but I think this should be useful for both readers and myself.

The Problem

It is inefficient, unpleasant and feels behind the times to have to launch another application like a browser or iTunes to play media files delivered to my feed reader. Online syndicated media is an exploding market; as methods of communication go, it’s one of the fastest growing, most compelling and potentially most commercially viable new developments that has emerged in some time. An estimated 30 million people (5% of broadband users) watch at least one video online each day. There are currently an estimated 4.2 billion total video streams per month arround the web. In order to effectively engage with this media, many of us are going to need RSS readers that are equipped for the task.

Right now none of the leading RSS readers for Mac or Windows let users capture, preview, play, tag and share items within the application itself and in the order that they arrive in your aggregator. In other words, I cannot find any feed reader on the market today that combines rich media support, integration with 3rd party tagging and sharing services and a “river of news” view. That’s a problem.

Tools Available Today

The following are short descriptions of the 10 leading commercial RSS readers and a comparison of their features. Who’s the winner? No one is a clear winner by the criteria I’ve chosen.

Summary of Recommendations

As a Mac user, I’m going to spend more time with NewsFire on my desktop. If I was a Windows user and wanted to consume video inline and needed a river of news view – I would cry. If rich media is more important to you then go with Google Reader. If a river of news is more important then go with FeedDemon.

The Chart

click to expand

Review Criteria

A few notes about what I was looking for and how I interpreted it. Or skip to the paragraphs about each product.

Plays Audio

My criteria here was whether the product let me play an audio file from inside the same window that the text accompanying the file is displayed. Google Reader is the best at this. The worst case scenario is being told to open iTunes to listen to audio; it’s distracting to open a new application and that file is then put on my iPod next time I sync up.

Plays Video

See the description of audio playing above. The best web based reader for playing video is either Google Reader or Bloglines. The best on the desktop is RSSOwl. Most video on the web is now delivered or available in Flash, so that’s how I tested these tools.

Displays photos

When I’m subscribed to a photo feed, I want to be able to see the photos large format in the feed as I scan down my reader. Readers that only show me the title of a photo and a link to the photo itself are worthless to me as I will almost never click through to view the photos. Many of the products discussed here are good about that, but not all. I think I like FeedDemon’s handling of images the best.

River of News

A river of news view displays items in the order they were published, no matter what feed they were delivered in. Contrast this with the way Bloglines or Google Reader work, where I have to view all of the items in one feed before I see all of the items in another feed. (Update: Commenters pointed out that you can in fact get a river of news view for one folder at a time in Google Reader. That’s still not ideal, but good to know.) Give me the most recent items across all my feeds either in total or folder by folder, ideally both would be possible – that’s often how I want to read what I’ve subscribed to.

If I open my folder titled “sports videos” I want to watch a sports video published at 10:00 on YouTube after I view a sports video published at 10:30 on Metacafe – I don’t want to have to view a whole week’s worth of Metacafe videos before I can view a video from an hour ago on YouTube. This is very important to me, as responding to the most recent information is a big part of my work. Unfortunately very few vendors support this well, and I think it’s because RSS use is in its infancy.

If you are someone who eats and breaths RSS for a living and you don’t require a river of news view – please get in touch with me, I’d love to find a more broadly supported method of consuming feeds. I can’t imagine a better way to do it, though.

Tagging

I should be able to view a movie in my feed reader and then tag it in a third party service without launching my browser or another tab. Almost no one support this, but NetNewsWire and FeedLounge are the best. It would be nice if there were options other than del.icio.us – but all tags meet at del.icio.us so it’s no big deal for now.

Choose partial or full feeds

Sometimes I just want to scan headlines and summaries, other times I want to scan through full entries that include thumbnails or previews of videos or images. I should be able to switch between these views with one click. Google Reader is probably the best at this right now.

Free

Most but not all web based readers are free to use, most but not all desktop readers require a one time fee. In the consumer market that fee is generally under $30 but there is a free trial period available and even at $30 a good RSS reader will have a great return on investment. I highly encourage people to look at products in this space that are not free. Desktop readers are faster to use and allow a fair amount of access to feed contents when offline.

Mac/Windows

Most web based feed readers work well on either Mac or Windows but only some of the desktop readers are available for both.

Ten Top Feed Readers

Google Reader

The Google Reader is a relatively new online feed reader and is quickly gaining popularity because it’s clean, fast and powerful. It embeds and plays video from YouTube but not some other Flash video feeds. One unique thing it does is create a simple audio player at the end of any item with an audio attachment. Google Reader would be the winner in this space were it not for two problems: no off-line access and no river of news view. I was very excited to use Google Reader before I realized that there is no river of news view. That makes it nearly unusable to me. (Update: Commenters pointed out that you can in fact get a river of news view for one folder at a time in Google Reader. That’s still not ideal, but good to know.)

Bloglines

Ask.com’s Bloglines has been a popular online feed reader for years and made a big splash when it recently announced support for the viewing of Flash video inside the program itself. Not all video feeds show up in Bloglines. I like the people behind Bloglines, they have come up with some very smart strategies, but I find the reader itself too frustrating and inflexible to use.

Newsgator Online

Newsgator has acquired two of the best desktop readers on the market, NetNewsWire and FeedDemon, and also offers a free online feed reader. All of the products work well together and can be used with a mobile version. The online feed reader has a wonderful river of news view but doesn’t support rich media and has long suffered from performance issues. For some time I thought that all web based feed readers were slow and frustrating, but Google Reader changed my expectations in this regard.

NetNewsWire

NetNewsWire, Newsgator’s outstanding desktop feed reader for the Mac, is fast, flexible and has a lot going for it. Its inability to play media files was my impeteus for surveying the rest of the field, though.

FeedDemon

FeedDemon is a beautiful Windows desktop reader from Newsgator. It supports the river of news view and handles images very well but doesn’t play media files.

NewsFire

NewsFire is a Mac desktop reader that’s asthetically pleasing, fast and plays video inline. It supports a river of news view on the folder level. It does not play audio files though, which is a real shame. It behaves in some peculiar ways that I’m going to try to dig inside the preferences to change. It looks to me like a great implementation of one way to read feeds but isn’t terribly flexible for different feed reading practices. None the less, I may give this a more extended try.

I wish I could see the screen captures of videos while browsing feeds without having to click on an item’s title first. Some non-YouTube videos play inconsistently and video sometimes causes NewsFire to crash on my computer. Like I said, absolutely no one is getting this right yet – but I’m going to spend some more time with NewsFire.

BlogBridge

BlogBridge is a fascinating but complicated cross platform Java desktop reader. It doesn’t support media files.

FeedLounge

FeedLounge has a reputation for being fast. It’s a web based reader that costs $5 per month to use. It has a river of news view and handles images well, but doesn’t let you play audio or video inline.

RSSOwl

RSSOwl could be the winner here if only it worked better. It’s a free cross platform desktop reader that has every feature I’m looking for. Unfortunately, it crashes a lot on my Intel Mac and requires too many keystrokes to accomplish what I want to do. It’s like a much more awkward version of NetNewsWire. The media handling though is fantastic. If rich media consumption is important to you, I’d highly recommend giving RSSOwl a try – perhaps you can work with it better than I can. The fact that viewing full feeds and accessing the river of news view is as difficult as it is in this product is a real heart breaker.

Rojo

Rojo is an interesting reader with strong social elements but very limited and awkward functionality. A lot of people like it, but since being acquired by blogging software company SixApart it looks like Rojo has not had much energy behind it. Media handling is non existent.

See also

Attensa for Outlook plays audio files and does a whole lot more in an enterprise context. RSSBandit is a free Windows desktop reader that supports river of news and says it supports audio and video but I couldn’t get either to work. It has other limitations but many people do like it.

My Dream Feed Reader

If I could piece together the various options available to me now, what I’d like is this. I’d like an online reader with the speed and media handling of Google Reader and the river of news functionality of Newsgator Online. I’d like it synced with a desktop reader that combines the stability, 3rd party tagging and river of news of NetNewsWire with the aesthetics of FeedDemon and the media handling of RSSOwl. I don’t believe that anyone has yet nailed the cross platform mobile reader that syncs with web and desktop readers. That’s subject of another post, though.

Is this too much to ask for? I don’t believe that it is. As increasing numbers of knowledge workers and consumers start engaging with rich media and RSS, I think I’ll be far from alone in these desires. When the Pluck feed reader was retired last month, Richard MacManus and some other people said that it was proof that stand alone feed readers were not a commercially viable product. Some companies take the approach of offering free consumer RSS products to build visibility for their enterprise products.

I really believe that once feed readers find some best practices and the market develops for their use – consumer facing feed readers will be a very viable product. Nothing is on fire like online video is, though, and feed reader vendors need desperately to improve their support for rich media in their products.

See also Marc Canter’s recent discussion on this topic here and here.

I hope that the vendors in this space are able to keep on making magic – I need more than I’m able to find available today.

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