Bloglines is Scheduled to Shut Down

Just in time and much to the excitement of most, Bloglines is scheduled to shut down. The tumultuous history of the RSS feed, which is owned and operated by IAC, a property of Ask.com is issuing a statement today regarding more in-depth information behind the decision to shut it down. The official shut down arrangement of Bloglines is set to occur as of October 1, 2010.

In February of 2005, Bloglines was purchased by IAC for an estimated price of around $10 million dollars. However, since the original launch the site has seen it's share of troubled times. Perhaps the sites failure to launch any features that are newer or more innovative had a great deal to do with the its lack of productivity and usage. Although it has been considered in the past that permanently killing the site would be in the future, IAC battled these rumors in attempts to renew and refurbish Bloglines, to little avail.

Ask.com's President, Doug Leeds, has stated that Bloglines would be closing for reasons pertaining to the lack of a growing market for users of the service. In addition, Leeds also added that the shift among the markets to more main stream sites such as Facebook and Twitter has resulted in a shrinking usage among RSS feeds. In fact, it was also noted by Leeds that there has been as much as a 20% downfall among internet traffic to RSS feeds. Ask.com will, however, make continued efforts in enhancing their site to more adequately solve popular questions and answers.

Bloglines is not the first RSS feed reader to surrender and throw in the towel; just last year, Newsgator also made the decision to close their doors and shut down their internet newsreader. Google Reader is now the lone competitor; although even it has become a product that is being slowly overtaken.

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