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(2011-10-20) Google Reader Social Features Moving To Google Plus

We’re going to bring Google Reader and Google Plus closer together, so you can share the best of your feeds with just the right circles. As a result of these changes, we also think it's important to clean things up a bit. Many of Reader's social features will soon be available via Google+, so in a week's time we'll be retiring things like friending, following and shared link blogs inside of Reader.

Why not just add your Google Plus circles to the Google Reader Send To pulldown? Though I guess that wouldn't change the fact that you're being pushed into Google Plus to have any social features.

Some people really like/use the Google Reader social features, but it's not many.

  • I sometimes browse the stuff Shared by the handful of people I follow in Reader.
  • More often I catch their Shares in FriendFeed!

I hope this is heading toward a point where Google Reader becomes part of Google Plus (and that Google Plus sucks in Twitter and FaceBook streams, moving closer to FriendFeed).

In the meantime, I suspect this will screw up the IfTTT piece for my Del.icio.us cross-post. 2011-08-12-TaggedBookmarkingAndLinkblogging[[Google Reader]]

And my GReader usage.

  • Oct25: Brent Simmons explains the complexity of synchronizing an RssAggregator.
    • Dave Winer says to just use a WebApp. Great if you don't need Off-Line use, like for my WiFi-only Archos70. And, because I subscribe to so many feeds (many of which I read rarely), I end up doing partial synchs, so it's necessary to track per-item status rather than per-feed. (If I could only pick a subset of feeds to have in my Off-Line reader, that would be ok, as long as it synched to a full online set.)

Oct31 update: the change has happened (at least for me)

  • no more Share button
  • can export my previous Shares
  • can +1 for Google Plus (Like Button)
    • but there doesn't seem to be any place in Google Plus for me to see all the +1s of my friends merged together - I have to go in 1 friend at a time!
  • can not Share in Google Plus: correct, if you +1 it then gives you a popup to Share.
  • can Send To variety of places (including Twitter and Del.icio.us) (not to Google Plus)
  • can still "star"
    • doing a Star in GReader (still) synchs properly and shows up on my reader-home page
    • but this seems completely private - not viewable by others. I see some Help references to "having a public page... for your starred items" but I don't see a way to do that, so that Help node might be obsolete...
  • Les Orchard notes that Note In Reader bookmarklet is doing nothing now.
  • IfTTT handling of my shares? Wow, I did a Share in GReader, and it showed up in Del.icio.us via IfTTT, even though the Share doesn't appear anywhere on a Google property! It also shows up in my FriendFeed stream! (But I can't assume those behaviors will stick around...)
    • IfTTT can also trigger tasks off of Google Reader Stars and Likes. But, again, are these going away, or changing?

Nov02: good Les Orchard gloss. He notes some alternative RssAggregator-s: Dave Winer's River2 code, Django-based NewsBlur, and PHP-base TinyTinyRss. (Off-Line use isn't a big issue for him.) While considering those, he's back to PinBoard use (and has now added it to his FriendFeed stream).

Nov03: so what should I do now, esp given uncertainty of things going forward?

Nov04: IfTTT removed the Shared trigger. I created a Starred task.

Nov05: Les Orchard is re-evaluating his whole Social Media/Thinking Space ecosystem, making lots of use of IfTTT. I Commented to ask about his Note In Reader replacement: he's using PinBoard, as I'm using Del.icio.us. See his 2010-12-11-OrchardLessDeliciousMetadata.

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