A lot of people use Google Reader as their primary RSS feed reader, so you’d think its social features would be extremely popular. But they’re really kind of lame, and extremely underpowered. And Google knows this, that’s why it’s continually shifting the way it presents the social elements. The latest change today allows users to more easily find and share with friends of friends. That is to say, if you have a friend sharing an item with you, and another one of their friends comments on it, you can now get access to that friend.
This idea isn’t really anything new, in fact, FriendFeed (aka the primary source of Facebook’s innovations these days), has been doing something similar for a couple of years now. The reason for doing this is obvious: If you don’t have a lot of friends on a service, the friend of a friend element pipes more content into your stream to make things more active, and thus, more appealing to use. But FriendFeed is doing this much better than Google Reader is, so far.
Trying the new functionality out, it seems a bit weird that I would be asked if I want to share my updates with a certain person who I probably don’t know. Instead, wouldn’t it be better to have the option to see their updates? Of course, Google Reader doesn’t work that way. Following its snafus when it first ventured into social sharing, the company made it awfully hard to share stuff. So whereas you can subscribe to anyone on FriendFeed (at least anyone that has an open feed, just like on Twitter), to see items on Google Reader, they have to share stuff with you. The problem with this is that most people don’t care to take the time to explicitly set their sharing settings to include all those people that may want to be included.
And there’s another problem with Google Reader’s social aspirations. The product from a sharing standpoint is extremely clunky. Sharing is tucked away in its own drop down menu, something which I routinely find is just about my last item to visit (and is normally relegated under the “Mark all as read” umbrella). The problem here is that all of my individual friends’ names are listed below the “Friends’ shared items” banner, so I keep it minimized to avoid clutter. I also keep it minimized because rarely do my friends ever comment on items. And if they do happen to, it’s even rarer that another person will comment as well, giving you — get this — a conversation. That’s something that FriendFeed does extremely well. Google Reader? Not so much.
It was smart of Google to tie the Google Reader profile into the newly emphasized Google Profiles — this is something we’re going to see more of across all its properties, no doubt. But what Google Reader really needs is some way to spur social usage. It needs either a main page where the most shared/most talked about items are listed, that gives you a rundown of who shared what. It sort of has a recommended area, with its “cool” feed, which shares popular items across the Google Reader ecosystem, but that’s far from social.
Or maybe it should add a list comments you leave on shared items to your main Google Profile. This would be a micro-blog of sorts with your take on stories. Of course, that would require that you allow anyone to see your shared items, which is something, again, you cannot do within Google Reader. But oddly, you can see others’ shared items if you know their public Shared Item page URL (which is a bunch of ugly numbers and letters and should be turned into their Google Profile name as well, if Google is going to go in that direction). It’s really quite a confusing mess.
As I noted, a ton of people use Google Reader as a primary way to go through items on the web. It seems natural that this would be a powerful social tool as well, but Google has effectively made it one of the most closed social networks around. It’s closed and its clunky. That just reeks of inactivity.
Google Fail
Their social network orkut is in shambles. They made its users think that social networks are of no use. People in India and Brazil think sn are useless, why sign up to facebook too?
Are you aware of this?
Please explain.
My current “share” URL is like something from hugeurl — only it’s not a joke.
http://www.goog...605410468146054
Seriously. What’s that all about? Why not allow me to map this to a username or profile entry like my Google Profile? It’d be a lot easier to remember.
Or, is there a fear that the security wrapper or understanding of public vs. between friends vs. personal notation isn’t easily communicated?
My “Friend’s Shared Items” has been on a steady decline. I’m unclear as to why but maybe it’s just that this is popular with very insular and passionate sub-groups. I’m not in one. This makes me sad.
I do find some great stuff there when I wade over to check it. Ideally, I’d be able to slurp it in from somewhere else. I just don’t have the time or patience for silos.
Re: URL, exactly.
Re: Decline, it’s not just you Jay, the system is just too clunky to maintain usage as is.
I have one thing to say
Feedly.com
I have used google reader… Barely. Now I am hooked. Plus it ties Twitter and friendfeed
Plus one for Feedly.
But I wish I can tag my shared/starred feed in Feedly
Also, I still can’t figure out what the hell the difference is between sharing something with a note and commenting on something you’ve shared.
yeah good point. no clue either. also if you comment on something you can unshare it too, but then what if you share it later?
Google RSS related ideas:
Wishing there was built in functionality for managing the vast amount of my feeds and posts.
http://www.crow...nformation.html
http://www.crow...g-solution.html
Currently the only useful sharing feature is via email (if you can find it). I’d also love the ability to share and comment via Facebook (with Facebook Connect?), Twitter and Wordpress. A no brainer.
How about a true iPhone App too?
Part of my 8 Google Feature Requests article:
http://ryanspoo...-reader-chrome/
I have Facebook setup to import my shared items from Reader. The funny thing is that there are always many more comments on FB than Reader – even though FB imports comments as only a one line entry.
I think there’s something to be said for the fact that RSS’s popularity and reach are still somewhat “niche”. Sure, we all (within our industrie(s)) know how to use it, and use it effectively. But not everyone does.
http://mashable...05/02/rss-dead/
As we can see from Orkut, the social space is definitely not a Google strength
Uh, yeah, Brazil and India only have like 4 people on there.
http://www.orku...MembersAll.aspx
you can see how this translates to the US market on this map
http://www.welf...estate.com/map/
Reader is meant for READING feeds. Sharing them is secondary. I’m sick of all this ’social’ crap. All I want are my feeds. Couldn’t care less if anyone else reads what I read, has something to say about what they read, etc. gReader would be better w/out these useless ‘features’.
Amen. I just want to read feeds, nothing more. If I want “social” stuff, I’ll use facebook.
Google, please keep Reader lean and mean.
I totally agree. G reader is a RSS reader and rss reader in general has not really taken off like I expected. I don’t think it is just g reader, most rss readers have very low usages and number of them went out of business.
The ‘email to a friend’option which is integrated to your gmail address book was one of my fav features..however feedly has really taken over my Greader usage…
You have to give some credit to the Google Reader team because they are not just trying to solve sharing in Google Reader but instead integrate with the bigger social graph and profile picture that Google is trying to put together.
As such they have two concept of sharing:
1) is at the RSS level. If you advertise your share feed, I can subscribe to it. It is all public (similar to the twitter model. The URL problem will go away when/if Google pulls of the profile problem because that URL will be just a piece of your Google Profile).
2) at a bi-directional friend level (similar to facebook and open social, where someone request a friend and the other person approves). This is harder to establish (and could get further streamlined/simplified as you are pointing out). But this is a richer relationship with more control on both side and the ability to exchange private comments – similar to facebook).
Could 2) be simpler? yes. Should 1) and 2) evolve into something more compatible? But if you step back and try to look at the big picture, you will see that it is not a trivial snake to kill.
I must agree.
Everyone keeps mentioning Orkut as a way to say that Google isn’t great when it comes to social sites, but from what I’ve noticed, Orkut is largely ignored in favor of their Google Profile/Talk/Account network.
Really from the look of it, sites like Orkut, Facebook and MySpace are designed with now in mind and not the future (though Facebook is known for quickly adapting to change).
I think what Googles aimed at is a more open network design, one where you can add friends from any network and interact with each other without boundaries, which is why their Friends list is just a standard category in your Google contacts and not the same old bi-directional style most users are used to.
In time though, like you’ve said we will probably see a bi-directional friend system, but it’ll most likely rely on the existing friend system only adding an e-mail address to each others contacts under the Friends category (I think they’re going for a Twitter-like approach instead of only having a 2 way connection).
Google gets a lot of things right but for some reason, they just can’t get the social side figured out. I mean, come on, orkut?
Sharing and rss reader with friends is secondary to most for a reader, I think keeping favorite rss feeds for public conception is a better idea – say way twitter followers. Good reader should allow or do automatic discovery of feeds that has similar contents of the current reader items – an algorithm they are good @ today anyway.
share webs….
http://www.ipho...ogs/mobile.html
I use Google Reader all day long, and yet I’ve never thought, not once, “Gee, what are my friends reading?”
WHO CARES!
99% of the time, I’m going to have already read what they shared. The other 1% of the time, I’m probably not going to care.
I already know how to monitor all the news sources I need with GR.
As it is, I get way too much overlap between digg+techcrunch+slashdot coverage.
Meh, I still prefer Bloglines, but then again, I like my RSS readers simple.
Interesting what google is trying to do with social bookmarking competition.Elsewhere they will have to maintain their reader in avoidance to flee.
RSS reader must be KISS as I spent a huge amount of time using it.
when reading I’ve got my hands on the keyboard, j for next, s for star (my own memory ) and shift+s to share. Couldn’t be easier.
For instance I’ve shared 8 techcrunch post for the last 30 days).
Some of my “friends” do not have subscribed to techcrunch (too many for their own taste) and can rely on my digest as I rely on their for other domains.
isn’t it the real social intelligence?
BTW, I spent much more time sharing on google reader than on FB !
Anytime a friend shares an article, it appears in the main feed. As I’m scrolling through my articles and a shared article appears, it says (very clearly) at the top of the article who shared it (and includes any comments they may have included when they shared it). The fact that you’ve minimized the list is irrelevant.
Also, the keyboard shortcuts are great. Most people overlook them — simply press “Shift – ?” and you’ll see a list of available shortcuts. GR should do a better job of advertising this feature.
While the article is right in a lot of ways, I personally love the way that Reader sharing works as it lets me and a few *close* friends share and comment on articles without clogging up email. The last thing I would want is all of these articles being posted as links on my twitter or facebook.
However, if there was a one-click way of sharing to social apps like fb, twitter, digg then that would be handy too…
I think that if Google wants to make Reader better they should step away from the “social” concept. I would love to see them add the capability to leave comments to a post without leaving Reader. THAT would be a big plus in my book.
Kevin
yeah ! +1, post and READ comments
+1 this functionality would be huge!
I, too, think Google Reader is meant for reading feeds which it does quite well. I am feeling really addicted to it’s experience and never missed social features.
Whenever I find an article to be of interest to my friends I just use the ‘Share’ option and the marked feed item appears in my friends’ lists of items shared by their friends. I think this is a powerful feature as it gives me ability to read exactly what my fiends think will be of interest to me, and they can also add notes.
I somehow miss a clear way to discuss an article via GR but that’s a side experience from my point of view when talking about Google Reader. I really can’t live without it.
I really hate the sharing features, which are often activated by accident. Please move the UI for sharing/notes/tagging to somewhere no easily clicked by accident.
High Quality Replica Vacheron Constantin Watch
Thanks for the useful info. It’s so interesting