There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth when Bloglines, the Web-based RSS reader maintained by Ask.com, had its shutdown announced. There aren’t many solid players in the world of Web-based RSS readers (I use desktop reader myself; in fact, I use two.) Those of you who were unhappy about the shutdown will be pleased to hear that Bloglines will remain available. According to the Ask blog, the site will be taken over and maintained by MerchantCircle. Users’ feeds and login information will remain the same.

Of course, if you go to Bloglines now, you’ll see that the site will be maintained until at least December 1, after which it will transition to MerchantCircle. I’m really glad to hear this. Bloglines is a long-lived application with a very large user base, and it seemed like it would be able to find a home somewhere.

Speaking of online services that caused much alarm when they were canceled, bookmark sync service Xmarks recently announced that it too has been given a reprieve after announcing a shutdown. In this case there aren’t too many details yet and it doesn’t seem like the deal is 100% final. Stay tuned to the Xmarks blog for more information.