UPDATE: My complaints below proved unfounded after going through the system with its developer. My apologies. Please check out BlogBridge with confidence that it can in fact do the things I wrote below that it could not.

In my ongoing effort to find the best RSS reader for my serious feed reading needs, I just tried out BlogBridge. Though it has some very innovative features that have been widely written about and has a nice look to it, the first few minutes of use made its shortcomings for me clear.

It does not respect the folders in my OPML file. This alone is a deal-breaker. I have 600 RSS feeds carefully organized into folders by priority and if importing those files into a feed reader strips out the folders, I’ll be darned if I’m going to use the thing. I though I had selected the “import as multiple guides” option, but the OPML coming in from Net News Wire just landed in one undifferentiated pile called “my subscriptions.”

There is a limit to the number of feeds you can import – 500! After all the talk on the company’s front page about how BlogBridge users are different because they read a large number of feeds, this was a major disappointment. I can’t use a system that doesn’t welcome all my feeds in at import!

No “river of news” option. As far as I can tell, if HorsePigCow is the feed I’m subscribed to that has been most recently updated, I have to read every item in that feed – even ones a week old, before I the items in the second most recently updated feed appear. There is discussion of river of news throughout the BlogBridge site but I can’t see how to make it work that way.

I like the del.icio.us support, the dynamic reading lists shared with other users and some of the metadata about each feed in my subscription list, but there are too many shortcomings here for serious feed readers seeking to jump in. That’s how it appears to me at least.