Can someone explain me, why Google shutting down their reader is such a big deal? I use Thunderbird as my RSS reader, and after two days of everyone panicking I feel like I missed something about RSS/Google Reader.
One of the biggest impacts are on those of us who use multiple devices to read feeds, Google Reader synchronized the read/unread status of all the elements so if you saw something on your phone you wouldn't see it again on your desktop (unless you starred it which is like +1 but just for yourself).
Synchronization, I use 5 computers (some with 2 OSs), 2 tablets and a phone for a great quantity of feeds with different frequency of weekly/monthly posts. I do not care how I read these posts but I care to sync them in all these device.
I felt the same way. What's dying down is the service NOT the RSS itself. There are still plenty of alterative to choose from. I use Feedly mainly now though honestly I don't use Feedly as much as before.
Google Reader was one of the most popular RSS readers, either directly or through its API.
Same here. I use NetNewsWire which attempts to use Reader to sync, and does a somewhat poor job of it. Won't be a big deal, in any case. I had no idea so many people used Reader like this.