It looks like Facebook isn’t the only site to draw inspiration from FriendFeed. Google Reader has just launched a new feature that gives users the ability to comment on items that have been shared by their friends, allowing them to hold conversations focusing on each individual story. In other words, it does almost exactly the same thing as FriendFeed (at least for stories shared through Google Reader).
There are a few key distinctions. For one, conversations in Google Reader are only be visible to friends of the user who originally shared a story (FriendFeed allows comments to be displayed to the public with input from users who aren’t your friends). But Google’s blog post notes that it has more for its new comment system on the way, and it wouldn’t be surprising if public sharing is on the roadmap.
Also important to note is that there’s apparently no way to export the conversations that are held on Google Reader. While this is likely because of the private nature of the conversations, it can’t be welcome news to services like FriendFeed, which thrive on being able to import activity from other sites.
We’ve heard that Google has been toying with this idea since at least 2007, when we noted why some blog owners may well be opposed to it. For those blogs that send out full feeds (rather than summaries or the first paragraph of their posts), this new feature could potentially move the conversation away from the blog and onto Google Reader.
“Also important to note is that there’s apparently no way to export the conversations that are held on Google Reader. ”
Sounds like the Hotel California
Google trying to use monopoly in RSS reader.. When will they learn??
Yeah, That’s right..But no one uses friend feed as much as I know.
http://www.smartbloggerz.com
nobody really uses friendfeed but everybody sure copies them
the best features get copied. period.
which is why friendfeed adopted and improved facebook’s feed concept in the first place.
adding comments, by the way, is not stealing from friendfeed. more like stealing from blogger. or messageboards. srsly.
FriendFeed aggregates from many sources and feeds to your choice of sources. A small, loyal circle seems to use friendfeed as a chat room and place to comment on posts.
The strength of FriendFeed is the frequency that their robots act to grab feeds and pass on the lifestream.
The realtime feature is cool, but reminds me of the old chat rooms – conversations with few listening. Of course, Twitter is no different. (FYI, we’re out to change that. See http://tv.tEarn.com/ as one of 25 supersites.
Sharing via Google Reader makes less sense. Would friends read the same feeds? Would a company all read the same feeds? What a waste of company resources. Better to have each person read different sources and share via a forward.
Google Reader is faster than my Yahoo in terms of getting feeds, but not near realtime like FriendFeed.
Overall, I don’t see the threat to FF. Google won’t waste the resources to become realtime to challenge a small group like FF.
I don’t think it’s a FriendFeed killer, but you can’t deny the similarities.
I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. It’s so natural to want to comment on friend’s shared items. Plus, commenting on websites generally sucks.
Hell, I want to comment on all my items through google reader. Then pipe it to the website and while you’re at it…friendfeed.
FF is a speck on a pimple on a flee on an elephant’s ass, in my opinion.
Doesn’t this happen on Topix.com? And hasnt it been havenning for a very long time?!?!
We implemented that in Rojo like a hundred years ago
… about time other startups caught up 
Don’t be surprised when DISQUS and IntenseDebate integrate gReader coments, not forgetting Wordpress plugins. This won’t drive attention away from the blog, merely encourage participation.
Google always comes out with some good concepts…google reader will now become more social
it’s a true game of “valley borrowing” that doesn’t exclude itself from any web service. it’ll be interesting to see who benefits from this open era of information sharing…
http://www.tech...valley-part-20/
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