In typical Techcrunch fashion, they have a sensational headline, a thesis I agree with, in general, but total rubbish for article content.
One of the sub points in this article is that only Feedly and Digg are viable alternatives.
I cannot tell if it is pure lazy research by the author, or some other nefarious reason, but a large number of great alternatives other than Feedly and Digg exist. Digg’s product hasn’t even been released as of this writing. How can you claim a product is one of two only viable alternatives when it hasn’t been released yet?
Coincidentally, I dismissed both Feedly and Digg from my alternatives list because neither service have a viable monetization model, which would leave me right back at square one a year from now.
If you subscribe to the Indie Web model, which I am starting to come around to, you might want to consider a self hosted option like Fever from Shaun Inman. I have been running this since the Google Reader announcement and it runs well with the exception of on mobile which right now can be handled on the iPhone with Reeder.
Looking for a product that lacks a little on salesmanship, but makes up for in features check out Feed Wrangler. This product has inclusion and exclusion word filtering on feeds.
Both of these products have a visible and viable revenue model so I can be reasonable sure that I will not have to find a new product in a year.
If you want a deeper dive into what is out there for Google Reader alternatives as well as help in determining what your true RSS needs are I highly recommend the Mac Power Users Podcast. They do a great job and it is suitable for anyone not just Mac users.
Don’t follow that stampeding herd of ship toward that cliff. Make a more informed RSS Reader decision.