Ask.com kills Bloglines

Bloglines, the web-based RSS reader, will be permanently shut down next month.

Ask.com, which bought Bloglines in early 2005 for $10m, when it was the market leader, said on Friday that users should migrate to another service by October 1.

"Not an easy decision, especially considering our loyal and supportive (not to mention patient) user base, but, ultimately, the right one given business reasons simply too hard to ignore," it said.

The media group added that it wants to focus on its user-generated question and answer service, and that "RSS aggregator usage has slowed significantly" as a result of Facebook and Twitter feeds.

Ask.com's decision to scrap Bloglines has been expected for over a year. The service has not been updated for months, and has suffered multiple outages recently.

It leaves Google dominant in the web-based RSS reader market. ®