When I’m behind on the day’s news, all I have to do is read TechCrunch, TechMeme and this carefully constructed “human curated” list of shares. But I do enjoy reading the shares from a select group of heavy-duty RSS consumers who are consistently sharing interesting items. I don’t comment much on feeds, or friend and follow dozens of users. To be clear, I don’t really consider or use Google Reader as “social” product like Facebook, Twitter or Google+ (hence the quotes). In other words, proceed carefully or prepare for an earful.Īnd in this particular case, here comes the earful: I’m going to miss the “social” features Google Reader delivers.
#Google reader friends archive
But for those of us who use Google Reader regularly as a utility – as a place to track, follow, archive and search dozens of sources of information from favorite blogs to company feeds and more – any change to Reader has the equivalent impact as an overhaul of Gmail. For mainstream news consumers, that Google is now streamlining and beautifying this neglected product is probably welcome news. Look, I get that there’s probably only ten of you out there reading this who care much about changes to Google Reader. What really bothers me, however, is Google’s casual decision to remove all of Google Reader’s “social” features, including friending, following and shared link blogs.
While I’m not entirely thrilled about this change (I prefer the utilitarian look for the service), I understand Google’s need to maintain user interface consistency across its online products. Most notably, it’s getting a fresh new design along the same lines as Google’s other products, like Docs, Maps, Search and Gmail. "We'd hoped that making it easier to share with the people you chat with often would be useful and interesting, but we underestimated the number of users who were using the Share button to send stories to a limited number of people," the blog says.ĭanny Sullivan, editor of the Search Engine Land blog, writes: "Frankly, a better solution would be to dump the friends sharing feature until it comes back in a new form, where you specifically and deliberately create a list of contacts that you do want to share material with.Today Google announced its long-ignored RSS app Google Reader is getting an update.
#Google reader friends how to
To calm the masses, Google posted an item on the Google Reader Blog that explains the company's reasoning behind the change and tells how to clear the shared-items list and how to tag items to share with a limited number of people. Google, too, has been crucified in the blogosphere over its Google Reader change, with bloggers saying the Google Talk contact sharing feature should be opt in, not opt out. Facebook made that an opt-in feature, however, after consumer groups and Facebook members complained the service violated people's privacy. Recently, Facebook was forced to modify its new Beacon ad targeting service that notifies friends in your network when you buy things on sites of Facebook partners. Many are acquaintances or people you barely know and with whom you may not want to share a reading list. Last week, Google tweaked Google Reader so that your shared items are automatically made available to your Google Talk contacts.īut, as anyone who uses instant messaging knows, not all of your IM contacts are friends. Google Reader has allowed people to share items they are interested in with others since 2006 with hyperlinks, clips on blogs and storing them on a public page that you had to know the URL for to see.
In its attempts to add social elements to products, is Google pulling a Facebook?
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