When comparing The Old Reader vs Yahoo News Digest, the Slant community recommends The Old Reader for most people. In the question“What are the best news readers?” The Old Reader is ranked 6th while Yahoo News Digest is ranked 14th. The most important reason people chose The Old Reader is:
People from Facebook or Google can be found on The Old Reader so posts can be shared and discussed.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Social
People from Facebook or Google can be found on The Old Reader so posts can be shared and discussed.
Pro Very similar to the dismissed Google Reader
Ever since Google Reader has ceased to be an option, The Old Reader has grown in popularity.
Pro Great UI
A clean, easy to use interface.
Pro Easy to use
Intuitive, easy to overview service.
Pro OPML import
Allows for easy migration from any service that supports OPML.
Pro Freemium
Free version has a limit of 100 sites, upgrade to unlimited sites costs $25/year. Being freemium is a nice option for those that would like to try the app out without putting down any money first.
Pro Beautiful UI design
Great look and feel to the app as you swipe though stories or scroll down on a headline to read more details. Most stories come with custom designed graphs tailored for the story.
Pro Great for a casual reader of the News
Rather than give you full articles, the app creates "Atoms". It's a short summary of the news event, generated from a variety of different sources.
It provides infographs, images, videos and more to help you quickly understand the news event. This means you are able to read through all of the news stories in minutes.
Pro Only shows top few stories
Hard to get lost in reading news when you only get 8-12 stories at a time.
Cons
Con Not free/libre
This application is proprietary, and thus cannot be modified, freely distributed, or trusted to be secure. Also, if the developer abandons it again, there will be no way for others to continue to update it.
Con No mobile app
Lacks an official native mobile app, but the mobile version of the site is quite usable and there are apps which support syncing with The Old Reader.
However, users have created many apps for a variety of platforms using The Old Reader API. You can check them out here.
Con Not very customizable
While the sources can be added or removed, the feed cannot be filtered in any other way. Display options are limited as well, leaving the user with the standard view.
Con No customization of news headlines or categories
You only get the top 8-10 headlines of the day regardless of news category or source.
Con Meager sharing options
You can share any article in the digest, but it doesn't give many options for tailoring the message that is sent.