A few days ago, I sent out a tweet wondering how long it would be until Google Reader added a tweet button to the bottom of each feed item. My guess was that it would be very soon. I was quite right. Today, the Google Reader team has unveiled a bunch of new updates to the product, including, yes, the ability to easily tweet any item.
But that’s hardly all this update contains. You can also now easily send feed items to a number of places including Facebook, MySpace, Digg, StumbleUpon, Blogger, and others. To enable any of these, simply go to the “Settings” area of Google Reader and enable the ones you want to use. If the services you want aren’t listed, you can even customize the “Send To” feature to enable sending items just about anywhere.
Another new feature allows you to easily subscribe to feeds owned by people you are contacts with. This is an obvious, but nice addition, as it makes it easier to locate feeds you may be interested in — assuming, of course, that you’re actually interested in the people you follow on Google Reader. This feature also includes Twitter updates, so you can easily import all of those and see that person’s tweets through Google Reader if you don’t feel like scanning Twitter all day.
But the best feature of the bunch may be the ability to have more control over the “Mark all as read” functionality. We all use the “Mark all as read” button when we’re too far behind on our feeds to possibly catch up. But now you can just mark items that older than a day, a week, or two weeks as read, saving the newest ones for you to still be able to read. That’s a great idea.
Google Reader still has some social issues, but it’s hard to argue with any of these features.
Google reader needs a new fucking logo. A multi billion dollar company like Google, needs to invest in logo and product image….WTF>..
They have a logo… and its worth more than most.
Where is FriendFeed in the “Send to:” list?
-Srikanth
http://www.arktan.com
FriendFeed is here, which was bought by Facebook recently. http://www.friendfeed.com
Where is FF in the “send to:” list?
So I can share a post on Twitter but I still can’t have a nested folder or a smart list? Way to have your priorities in order, Google.
no one cares
VERY useful and better explained than Google could ever do. Thanks for this post!!!
It’s really a good news.
finally! i’ve been waiting this kind of feature as well.So now i dont have to do it separately.
I love Google Reader.Without it,I cant imagine how messy my email’s going to be.
I’m totally stoked about this.
I just set up a custom “Send To” site for supr. Shortens the link using the supr API and automatically submits it to both Facebook and Twitter in one click.
Freaking awesome…
Hi Sean,
Supr was the first thing that came to mind for a custom link. Care to share the parameters you used?
That’s Very good~but in China Twitter is blocked
I click send to twitter and nothing happens. Am I missing something? There’s not even an option to sign in?
Check your popup blocker — are you using Firefox?
the feedly firefox plug provides a far better front end to google readers functionality.
Yeah, Feedly is awesome. Makes sifting through all the subscribed feeds a breeze
Love these new features on Google Reader.
it is perfect
Is it going to be something like FB + FF v/s Goog + Twttr?? Tht wud be a good showdown!
MG — not nearly enough bad puns in there… foolow up once you’ve taken a *gander* at how this google gaggle *gooses* traffic? [I bet users migrate to it in flocks]
I still wonder when GReader will have proper search. That’s great that now you can mark old posts. But I want to have a search of the specific date. Assume you want to remember what happened in period of 15th Jan – 30 Jan. You want to track the trends in that period in ur feeds. Is it that difficult to make? Why it is important? When you mark two weeks of your feeds as read, but you didn’t read then you have a clear opportunity to come back and read that exact two weeks!!!!
I think everyone will like the mark items older than X read. I have it in my feed reader and it’s really nice, I also have it customizable and automated per feed, but i’m sure the reader is working on it.
Still no official reader api, I hope it’s coming.
what’s a google reader?
Oh thank you thank you. My Google Reader thanks you for emptying it so…
Anything that allows me to tweet the links/news I am interested in is always good news. Google Reader is one of the better RSS tools out there for sure!
unfortunately, I am not able to use this feature in the german version of Google reader … it just does not exist, not in the message view and not in the preferences … perhaps they´re rolling out the new features later on …
Nice and useful features.
Its not available for the mobile version yet
Any idea when will it be?
All they need to introduce now is a long polling comments view and ladies and gentlemen we have a winner!!
Can someone ask them to fix the broken ‘folders and tags’ section too, please? It doesn’t let me delete any of them anymore.
I made a quick walk through for adding a Send to Instapaper link, check it out if interested: http://www.will...-google-reader/
I always start skimming headlines from the most current. Sometimes I’ll get halfway through and have to bail. It’d be great to be able to figure out where I left off.
Is there any way to “mark all more current than….” as read, or something similar to accomplish what I’m after?
I love Google Reader just for the fact that it’s easy to read subscriptions from my phone.
After these new feature were rolled out, “Google Reader – Mark Until Current As Read v 1.2 for Greasemonkey” http://bit.ly/XRYtb stopped working at my computer(s)
Hi @guercheLE,
I am the author of this script and have fixed it. Look for v 1.3 here:
http://userscri...ipts/show/24955
Thanks,
Gautham