Postscript – RSS Feeds – Choice Time

Got Google News Alerts set up?

A few weeks ago I wrote a posting about the pending shut down of Google Reader that was scheduled (and happened) after July 1.  I noted that it was time for people who, like myself, are highly reliant on RSS feeds and were Google Reader users to consider – if they hadn’t already – migrating their feeds elsewhere as I did.

However, a postscript is in order.  The shutdown did occur and my material migrated easily to a new reader I am using, but one thing stayed behind.

As part of my drive to know the news as it happens, I am an avid user of another Google Tool – Google News Alerts.  When you set up an alert, you have a choice to send alerts as-they-happen, daily, or weekly.  I am in need of knowing when many things happen as they happen and I happen to think I get too many emails, so I had a lot of material scheduled to come through “as it happens” and by my feed reader.

Well guess what?  When my feed subscriptions migrated to my new reader, the news alerts did not migrate with it.  In other words, Google News Alerts by feed reader were collateral damage to the removal of Google Reader.  It makes sense, but I didn’t think of it.  Now the only option on your Google News Alerts is to have them sent by old fashioned email…

So you may want to go to your Google News Alerts and edit any alerts that you had set up to send to your Google Reader and modify them to send to you by email.  Otherwise, you could find yourself like me, sitting in the dark with no news.  And in my business, no news is no news.

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