SiliconBeat, part of the Mercury News family, confirms that Bloglines is having “issues”:
If you’re one of the many folks who read SiliconBeat through Bloglines, you may have noticed that our content is sometimes many hours old by the time it shows up in your Bloglines reader. Apparently, Bloglines is struggling with growth issues. Spokeswoman Cathy Thompson tells us the service has outgrown its current set-up, “and that’s slowing down the processing of new posts during peak hours.” Thompson characterized it as a temporary problem, until Bloglines can move to a new co-location server facility run by its parent company, Ask Jeeves/IAC. Here’s hoping the move comes sooner rather than later.
Pardon me, but this is BS. Why isn’t this information posted on the Bloglines site? Why don’t support representatives include this information in their correspondence with people who send them e-mail reports of problems? When do they expect to have a fix? Why doesn’t Bloglines have a community site where users can exchange information? Why doesn’t Bloglines have a blog?
Meanwhile, NewsGator Online (also free) is getting more reliable every day. If you’re dissatisfied with Bloglines, check it out.
Ed Bott 
I agree, Ed. First off, ironic a blog aggregator doesn’t have a blog. Second, I ditched Bloglines a few months ago and started with NewsGator Online. I loved it so much I purchased the Outlook Edition and couldn’t be happier. Like you, I enjoy controlling the frequency I recieve updates…
…quite unforunate that a majoritity of subscribers use Bloglines.
Yet another example of a company that doesn’t get it. They have a product used by tens of thousands of people. The product is broken. They think they can hide that fact from said users, at least until they decide to get around to fixing it (assuming they can be bothered)
Except that the very demographic they serve is the poster child for the viral sharing of information on the web. So many, many people people become clearly aware of the problem, and of the company’s lame excuses and attempts to hide the problem until eventually forced out in the open.
The obvious way of dealing with it effectively is to post the problem as soon as they recognise it, but of course, that would also obligate them to start trying to fix it immediately, as opposed to being able to wait as long as possible before things degrade so badly they actually have to do anything about it.
Sounds like too many tech companies these days, unfortunately.
Ed,
I love your rant, but it seems to be a GROWING theme of many companies nowadays. Service appears to be off the charts unless your at a decent restaurant or involved in something where service is required – not just an offering to something else (like the bloglines website).
Keep in mind also that this is a free service – offered by bloglines. What’s their motivation? You’d like to think that they want to hook you in and get money from advertisers…
Just my take..
Chuck
Man, you guys are cold!
Absolutely not BS. We’re not trying to hide anything. Point taken that we should blog an update.
Bloglines has a blog and have had one since the service began. It is called Bloglines News, every member has an auto subscription. We post everything there, including service updates.
Bloglines has several user forums, also live since the beginning. They are accessible on our site from the Services page, and you’re welcome to participate there.
Bloglines is not a massive faceless corporation. We’re a small team, still led by founder Mark Fletcher, dedicated to building a great free service. There’s no hidden agenda, no vast advertising conspiracy — our motivation is that we love Bloglines and we want others to love it too.
Running a service like Bloglines is a massive technical challenge. We add 2-3 million new blog and feed articles every day, and while that is happening machines break, databases bork, upgrades happen. We get frustrated when it doesn’t work the way we want, and we’re doing our best to get it right.