Whew! It’s been a long time in coming…but the new beta for NewsGator Online is now online and ready to try. We’ve been slowly trickling it out over the last couple of weeks, and a handful of people have been playing with it, with the feedback being universally positive.

But what is it? And why?

It’s an entirely new, ajax-based reading experience. Visually, it looks fairly similar to the “classic” reader…but it’s much faster, has a lot fewer page loads, and generally “feels” better when you’re using it.

It was built for two reasons. First, to make the reader faster. Hundreds of thousands of people use NewsGator Online every day, and we want to make that experience as fast, efficient, and enjoyable as possible. And second, it’s the first release of an extensible GUI platform, on top of which we’ll be building out lots of new features pretty quickly.

It’s a beta, though, and it’s actually an earlier beta than we typically release. There are some rough spots, so the usual beta caveats apply…it might get your dog sick, steal your girlfriend, and scratch your car. :-) But it’s evolving very quickly – so if you want to see what’s coming, definitely take a look!

Click here to try the beta. Bookmark that page – you can also use it to switch back and forth between the beta and classic readers.

And don’t be shy – let us know what you think!