Google's controversial decision to shut down Google Reader on July 1st has left its users searching for a new news-collecting homeland, and we now have an idea of the scale of the RSS diaspora. Feedly has announced that more than half a million Google Reader users have signed up for its RSS service following Google's service termination announcement on Wednesday. Feedly also says it's working to keep up with its growth, increasing bandwidth by 10 times and adding new servers. Moving forward, the developers say its main priorities over the next 30 days are to keep the service running, to solicit suggestions from new users, and to add new features on a weekly basis.

The Google Reader shutdown will force users and developers of third-party RSS clients using Reader's services to find a new solution keep their news aggregators running. On Wednesday, Feedly promised that it would clone the Google Reader API to give users a "seamless transition" when Reader shuts down, and other RSS app makers, including the creators of Press and Reeder, have also indicated they are committed to finding a solution.