Why We Switched to Folo for Our RSS Feeds in 2024
Tired of cluttered RSS readers? We were too. Discover why our team switched to Folo in 2024 for a smarter, AI-powered, and collaborative news-reading experience.
Liam Carter
Lead Content Strategist at JunKangWorld, passionate about productivity and workflow optimization tools.
For years, RSS has been the quiet, unsung hero of our team's information diet. It’s the personal, algorithm-free newspaper we curate ourselves, a direct line to the sources we trust. But let's be honest: in the hyper-caffeinated content landscape of the 2020s, the classic RSS reader experience was starting to feel less like a streamlined newspaper and more like a firehose aimed directly at our faces.
We were drowning in feeds, struggling with information overload, and our old reader, a once-beloved tool, had become a source of digital anxiety. That’s why, in early 2024, we decided to make a change. After a thorough search, we moved our entire team over to a new platform: Folo. And a year later, we can confidently say it’s one of the best productivity decisions we’ve ever made.
The Problem with Our Old Setup
Our previous setup was a patchwork of solutions. Some of us used Feedly, others were on Inoreader, and a few were clinging to self-hosted options. This created a few significant problems:
- Information Silos: When our marketing lead discovered a brilliant article on a new SEO trend, sharing it was a manual process of copying the link and pasting it into Slack. There was no central hub for discovery and discussion.
- Overwhelming UI: Most readers are designed to show you everything. We’d open our feeds to a daunting wall of unread counts, hundreds of headlines vying for attention. It was exhausting before we even started reading.
- Lack of Smart Filtering: We wanted to see every post from certain high-priority blogs but only posts about specific keywords from others. Our old tools offered filtering, but it was often clunky, rule-based, and difficult to manage across dozens of feeds.
We needed a tool built for the modern team—something that valued focus over volume, and collaboration over isolation. We needed a reader that worked for us, not one that created more work.
Discovering Folo: The "Aha!" Moment
We stumbled upon Folo during a deep dive into next-generation productivity tools. The landing page didn't promise to show us more content; it promised to help us find the signal in the noise. Intrigued, we started a trial. The difference was immediate and profound.
Folo wasn’t just another list of articles. It felt like an intelligent briefing room, designed from the ground up to make consuming information calmer, smarter, and more collaborative. Here are the key features that sold us.
A Cleaner, More Focused Interface
The first thing you notice about Folo is the space. It’s clean, minimalist, and intentionally calm. Instead of a massive, intimidating list of feeds, Folo organizes content into customizable "Briefings." You can create a Briefing for "Competitor News," "Design Inspiration," or "Daily Tech Headlines."
This simple organizational shift changes everything. Instead of opening a firehose, you choose which specific stream you want to drink from. It puts the user back in control and immediately lowers the cognitive load.
“It’s the difference between walking into a chaotic, messy library and walking into a curated exhibit where everything is presented with context and purpose.”
AI That Actually Helps: Smart Summaries & Filtering
"AI-powered" is the most overused buzzword of the decade, but Folo’s implementation is genuinely useful. For any article, you can generate a quick, one-paragraph summary. This is a game-changer for triaging content. You can instantly tell if a 3,000-word deep dive is worth your time or if the key takeaway is all you need.
But the real magic is in its "Smart Filters." You can tell Folo to monitor a high-volume feed (like a major news outlet) but only surface articles that mention specific projects, technologies, or competitors. For us, we set it to watch several marketing blogs but only flag articles that discuss "B2B content strategy" or "programmatic SEO." It’s like having a research assistant who pre-reads everything for you.
Seamless Team Collaboration
This was the feature that sealed the deal. With Folo, we created a shared "Team Workspace." Here, we can add feeds that are relevant to everyone. When someone finds a must-read article, they don't just share a link—they can highlight a specific paragraph and add a comment directly within Folo.
This creates a rich, contextual conversation around the content itself. The discussion is saved with the article, not lost in a sea of Slack messages. We have a shared "Must Read" collection where team leads drop critical industry news, and everyone gets a notification. It has completely streamlined how we share and discuss insights.
A Smarter "Read Later"
Folo’s "Read Later" function isn't just a dumping ground. When you save an article, Folo can automatically tag it based on its content. Saved a long-form article about a new JavaScript framework? It gets tagged "Development" and "Deep Dive." This makes it incredibly easy to find what you're looking for later, whether you have 5 minutes for a quick read or an hour for focused research.
The Switching Process: Surprisingly Painless
Migrating a team to a new tool can be a nightmare. We braced for the worst, but Folo made it remarkably simple. We exported our OPML files from our old readers, and Folo imported them flawlessly in about 30 seconds. All our feeds and folders were preserved.
Onboarding the team took less than an hour. The interface is so intuitive that after a quick 15-minute demo of the Briefings and collaboration features, everyone was up and running. The positive feedback started rolling in that same afternoon.
Our Workflow in 2025: The Folo Effect
A year in, Folo is deeply embedded in our daily routine. Our morning starts with a quick scan of our personal and team Briefings. The AI summaries help us quickly triage what's important. We highlight, comment, and share crucial insights directly within the platform.
The result? Our team is more informed, our internal discussions are more focused, and the anxiety of the ever-present "unread" count is gone. We’re spending less time sifting through noise and more time engaging with content that actually matters to our work.
Switching tools is always a risk, but moving to Folo was a clear win. It didn't just replace our old RSS reader; it upgraded our entire team's ability to learn and stay ahead. If you still believe in the power of RSS but feel let down by traditional tools, we can't recommend it enough.
What's your go-to tool for managing information? Have you found a reader that you love? Let us know in the comments below!