I'm already a big fan of the 'Share a Page' Google Reader Bookmarklet.
Sure people can fake out what the page actually says by re-writing the summary of the page but aren't these people supposed to be your friends? Try that once on me and you're dumped.
I share discoveries a lot by RSS. It is simply wonderful to be able to share single pages; suddently my daily Mixx summary is worth twice as much as it was worth before.
I also have a diverse group of friends. What I'd really like from Google Reader is a tag/label based share system. I want to be able to share some content with people and mark it 'search' so it only goes to the people interested in 'search'. I'd like to be able to share different content with people and mark it 'gaming' so it only goes to my geeky RPGamer buddies!
Increasingly Google Reader is the centre of my universal. My web comes to me in RSS streams and I manage all that via Google Reader. I love the way I can handle the incoming data - I just want more control on my outgoing data!
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Share with Google Reader
Friday, January 04, 2008
Kevin Fox leaves Google
Leaving Google is different than any other job I've left. Joining Google in 2003, it was the first time I took a job without knowing at the outset the reason I'd eventually leave the job (even if my employer didn't), and so it's strange to have found success there and yet feel a need for greater fulfillment sufficient to pull you away from what's generally recognized as the best workplace in America. It's even stranger that Google is the first place I've ever worked where I feel that I'm part of the company as opposed to working for the company.
Thoughtful comments from Kevin on his last day at, as he says, the Big G.
Kevin is a user experience designer behind Gmail, Google Calendar and the redesign that was Google Reader 2.0. These are all fantastic applications and I think the change from Google Reader 1.0 to Google Reader 2.0 is particularly noticeable and illustrates just how good Fox is. He's off to join a small start up like so many other ex-Googlers.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
I Support Google Reader
I've said it before and I'll say it again - I really like Google Reader.
Before Google Reader came along my preferred method to monitor RSS was through syndicated accounts at LiveJournal. I can't stress enough how useful it is to have Google Reader as brilliant as it is as a web interface and has good as it is as a mobile interface and not have to worry about keeping my RSS reading synchronised.
On the 14th December, 2007, Chrix Finne and Google Reader team announced a snacky shared items feature. In essence those items which you elected to share and which were already publicly available at your shared items page, in an RSS feed (here's mine) and even in blog widgets also became easily viewable to contacts in your Google Talk profile. The feature made it a lot easier to keep tabs on what other people wanted to share.
Now, this sharing feature had a number of advantages over other the established sharing options available at Google Reader. You could opt-out of it or you could opt-out certain contacts whom you didn't wish to share with. Of course, if these contacts had your public profile URL or you had a shared items widget live on your blog then they could still view the items there.
What we've had in recent weeks is a privacy backlash. Yes, some users are worried that people might see items that they've decided to share with the public. They weren't so bothered when any old stranger could visit their blog and look at the shared items widget. No. What's really annoyed these users is that people in their Google Talk contact list might see these items. I'd like to vent at these people. *vent*
It is true to say that Google's liberal with whom's added to your contacts. You only need to exchange a few Gmails with someone and they're automatically added as a contact. This is where the psychology kicks in. Are people in your contacts list your friends? Some people like to think so. Are people in your Google Talk contact list your friends? Yes? No? If they're not your friends and you prefer only your friends to be able to Google Talk you... will you block or remove them from Google Talk? Although it is certainly possible to block people from Google Talk many people are unwilling to do this as they don't want be seen as 'rude' or don't want to burn bridges.
Google's decision to let Google Talk contacts see your shared items in Google Reader, I suspect, throws this psychological quirk into the full glare of the limelight. That, I think, is why people are whining.
I don't have much patience for the whiners. As Garett Rogers points out; these people made their feeds public in the first place. I've more time for those bloggers who saw the linkbait opportunity here and took it.
I don't want Google to scale back on its integration plans, though. I want more of this. I want advanced features for RSS item sharing between contacts. I want to be able to share those RSS items labeled with certain keywords to a certain group of friends and I want other RSS items labeled with other keywords to be shared to another group of contacts. Right now, at bigmouthmedia, we have a pool of shared RSS feeds from Google Reader which are brought into Yahoo Pipes, de-duped, and then shared back into the company. It lets us mark interesting blog posts and news articles for other people in the company to read. Yahoo will be pleased that we use Yahoo Pipes but surely Google could provide this sort of group management feature too?
It's now fashionable to argue against Google. It's a sign of the search engine's success. Honestly, if they had waited until today to try and act against link farms then I would expect an outcry. "We're just trying to make money here with our link farms!" the link farmers would say, "How dare you tell us how to run our sites!".
"I've shared those RSS items with the world - and now you've let people I know look at them! - how dare you Google!" cry the muppets.
Update: After this post the Google Reader team offered some tips on how to manage your shared items. It didn't quite hit the problem on the head. Sure, you can share specific tags but only as an either/or to the standard Shared Items feature and doesn't address the fact that Google Talk contacts get opted into the general list. Nevertheless, it's great that Google can comment so quickly and over the holiday period too.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Come on Google Talk Friends - Share
I like the latest upgraded to Google Reader... but come on Google Talk friends; let's have some shared suggestions.
First I was torn between uploading pictures to Flickr or Facebook; I know more people find them on Facebook. Now I have to decided whether I should share an interesting blog post on Facebook, Google Reader or both!
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Feedburner and Google's Mobile RSS Reader
I was at Netimperative's search roundtable this afternoon where the topic was; "Do you believe the buzz about bid optimization - can it really get you bigger returns? How can you tell if you have the best?"
It was good to meet up with Jon Beeston from Efficient Frontier. He's one of those people who firmly believe the future is in portfolio management rather than bid management. As that's what Efficient Frontier offers, I'm not surprised!
It was a wide ranging discussion and we went badly off topic at times (Nabaztag's and World of Warcraft) but I must admit I did like the look of interest on some of the participants faces when I speculated about Feedburner and Google's Mobile RSS Reader.
We were talking about the future of mobile. Will it really take off this year?
After email, the function of my (beloved) BlackBerry (I'm with Vanessa on this one!) is Google's RSS Reader on mobile friendly. I'll skim through the RSS headlines, star, read or mark as read. It's the best way to keep up with the fast moving world of search.
I speculated that since Google knows all about the RSS I subscribe to and so many of them are powered by Feedburner they'd be easily able to insert mobile targeted RSS ads. They'd know I was on a mobile and could even point the ads to a BlackBerry friendly page. The ad itself would be short - but so's an AdWord creative.
I suppose if we want to get clever (and if BlackBerry get GPS) then we could even splice in local ads - but I'd rather have topic targeted ads.
Friday, January 05, 2007
How Google Reader could influence organic search results
Certainly it seems safe to suggest that Google reader could - and perhaps should - influence personalised search.
I think I was one of the first to break the news that Google Reader had been updated. I'll note that because it'll rarely happen. This isn't a "news first" blog. This is my rants and raves blog. I saw the chance to be quick with news and so I took it.
Some time later the brain begins to work. I do this often. Sometimes the penny can be slow to drop. I knew all this already. 
What we see on the trends report on Google Reader is that Google isn't just recording which RSS feeds I subscribe to (which is an indication that a human just voted for the quality of the site) but it is recording what percentage of the articles I read.
If I ignore an RSS feed then Google could notice.
If I ignore AdWords what happens? The quality score goes down and the advert begins to slip in position. It wouldn't be impossible for Google to note which RSS feeds got read (implying good content) and which did not.
Anyway... here's an idea. Do you know what would be cool? Being able to integrate your subscribed RSS feeds in reader.google.com to Google News. When I'm searching Google News and I use keywords which have also recently been mentioned in my Google Reader then it could let me know.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Google update Google Reader and Google Trends
Google have updated Google Reader so that it interfaces with Google Trends. It's great!
The new feature allows you to review which of your feeds you find the most popular. It offers a tag cloud (or in Google terminology a label cloud) of your most popular folders.
In the screen grab you can see how I've gone from being aware of Google Reader to being a power user in just a few days (ever since I decided to ramp up the blog, in fact).
It'll be a race between Philipp Lenssen's fine Blogoscope and Ionut Alex over at the equally fine Google Operating System to see who breaks the news to the masses!
Update: Google Operating System wins!
My Google Reader has just updated with Googiflied, another fine news source (the young Haochi Chen), who also seem to have broken the news. Haochi credits Googler Mihai Parparita with the first post on Google Reader's magic. Ah well. We're not at the stage of micro-second blog reporting. Scoop races are just a came for SEO geeks like myself!
