Over at TechCrunch there’s a good review on several of the major online feed readers written up by Frank Gruber of Somewhat Frank. The post covers: Attensa Online, Bloglines, FeedLounge, Google Reader, Gritwire, News Alloy, NewsGator Online, Pluck Web Edition, Rojo. My Yahoo, Live.com, Google IG and Netvibes were omitted as “virtual desktop applications” and not “heavy duty” RSS readers.

When checking Feedburner stats for one of my own blogs, I was interested to see that the top feed readers in the past 24 hours were: Bloglines, NewsGator Online, Rojo, Firefox Live Bookmarks, BlogBridge, Pluck, RssReader, Google Desktop, Opera RSS Reader and NetNewsWire. There were 50 overall, although I don’t know how many Feedburner will display at any one time.

The RSS reader reviews at TechCrunch were based on criteria in each of the following categories: user interface, feed set-up and discovery, support, mobile access and performance. What are the results? Here’s Frank’s summary:

If you are looking purely for performance, Google Reader and FeedLounge are the fastest in our tests. Bloglines and Rojo are the best choice if you are looking for a feature rich application (and Rojo blows Bloglines away on “web 2.0″ type features).

None, however, yet approach the speed and agility of the best desktop based readers like NetNewsWire and FeedDemon.

What I think was missing was the Sage plugin for Firefox. I’ve been using Sage for over a year now and it is by far my favorite way to track 200 plus search marketing feed subscriptions. Granted, it does not have all the features of the some of the desktop RSS readers, but that part of why I like it. What’s your favorite RSS Reader?
Update: Shortly after posting this, I received an email from Dave Taylor of Intuitive Life on his dissatisfaction with RSS and in particular, RSS readers. He makes some very good points.  For another view on RSS readers, check out Dave’s RSS reader rant.