Facebook and AOL: Two More Google Reader Alternatives Surface

On Monday, two new reader alternatives appeared to take the helm once Google drops its popular Reader off the face of the Earth and out of our lives on July 1. AOL has effectively announced that it is launching "AOL Reader," and at the same time, an anonymously sourced report from the Wall Street Journal suggests that Facebook might be introducing its own mobile news reader soon.

Before Facebook unveiled Instagram's new video capabilities on Thursday, July 20, rumors had hit the web that Facebook was possibly planning on unveiling an RSS reader at the event. That didn't happen, but according to the Wall Street Journal, a Facebook news reader is still just around the corner. Maybe it will be here before July 1, the generally settled-upon date for RSS readers vying to replace the soon-to-be-abandoned Google Reader.

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Facebook has been secretly working on the reader project for more than a year, according to "people with knowledge of the project" cited by the paper. Last week, we reported on possible Google Reader alternatives, which are coming out of the woodwork, including Digg, Feedly, and Facebook. On June 13, Tom Waddington, a web developer for Cut + Keep found what he thought were mentions of RSS feeds embedded in Facebook's code.

The RSS feed mentions were not, according to Waddington, connected to Facebook putting out RSS feeds, nor were they connected to interest or friend lists, but rather something else.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook's reader project is focused on mobile use, and its user interface takes after the popular magazine-style reader Flipbook. If the Wall Street Journal's report is correct, this would be the latest in several moves by Facebook aimed at both revamping its news delivery system and pushing Facebook's mobile platform.

Earlier this month, Facebook announced the addition of a hashtag system, like Twitter's, which aims at making conversations on their social network topic-linkable and therefore more "public." It also helps make news announcements or trending topics more accessible. Before hashtags, Facebook announced the redesign of its news feed in a March press event, according to PC Mag, which was a stab at making the mobile Facebook platform more readable and useful: providing "the best personalized newspaper" Facebook can, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the event in March.

At the same time as Facebook's move into the news reader business has begun to seem more probable, AOL's reader was effectively announced on Monday. After the private beta page of AOL's reader was discovered (at reader.aol.com), according the Next Web. At first, AOL's reader page only displayed this.

After the story leaked on the internet, AOL updated their page with some details about the reader, and an option to sign up with AOL, Facebook, Google, or Twitter accounts. According to the scant information made available by AOL so far, it will have several different view options, including the Google Reader headline-list style, a visual grid, an infinite scroll-style page, and an email format of some kind. You'll be able to tag and favorite articles, which is an essential feature, as is importing OPML files, which AOL also touted. Other than that, and the promise that AOL Reader's API will allow "anyone to develop their own applications for the web, desktop, and mobile," there is not much else known about the upcoming reader.

However, AOL responded to reports today on Twitter, using a Vine.

See you Monday #aolreader https://t.co/BzEOhte1P9

— AOL (@AOL) June 21, 2013

So AOL Reader is a real thing, and it's being introduced next Monday, July 1, just as Google puts its reader to rest. Oh, and one other detail: AOL says their reader is "free while in beta." Make of that what you will.