What Google Reader Should Implement
Google Reader has quickly become the internets RSS Reader of choice, it’s keyboard shortcuts and ease of use have made it easy to adopt and continue to use. The ability to share your feeds with your friends and comment on them is a definite shift towards a more social experience but it’s with this I feel there needs to be a few extra innovations to make it a more complete experience.
I am aware these functions might already be available via GreaseMonkey scripts but in my view they need to be hardcoded into the Reader itself.
Subscription to Friends Shared Items
Currently, Google Reader will only add the feeds of friends that you converse with over GTalk (or at least that is what I have found). If you were to find a link to someone’s shared items, you would click the “Subscribe” button (as shown to the right). Oddly though, this will only add that persons feed to your normal subscriptions, which of course you can arrange and group.
What Google need to do is add this persons feed into the “Friends Shared Items” area, grouping all of your friends subscriptions together. To not do this in the first place seems a bit backwards.
Add Google Talk To The Navigation Pane
Just as there is a chat applet inside Google Mail, Google should allow the option to embed a chat widget into their feed reader too. This could be tied in with a way to share feeds between friends, continuing the social aspect of the service.
The ability to find people who have the same feeds as you and connect with them could pave a way to personalised recommendations, something that Google does already offer but could make some more inroads into.
Add Social Buttons To Feed Toolbar
This is a hit or miss idea but would aid the adoption towards a more social web. Adding buttons to the bottom of posts would allow readers to help syndicate content, therefore increasing the desire for publishers to offer RSS feeds in the first place.
surely you can plug all that in manually to ig cant you?
https://www.google.com/ig
You can use Feedly to find other people’s shared item blogs. Some of my best feeds are other people’s shared items.
I think the Google Talk/ Chat for sharing is a great idea. I often have to open multiple tabs, with gmail in one and reader in the other, and switch back and forth between the two. I don’t need to tell you that it gets Frustrating.
@Kyle
I think finding people’s shared item’s isnt the problem, it’s when you subscribe. They are not listed under your friend’s, instead they are grouped with all your other feeds, which I think it a bit short-sighted.
@Brent
Tell me about it, I use Gmail to chat to my wife and then I have to open a new tab for gReader, the option should be at least there for people to use if they wish.
Excellent post, very interesting. The social buttons are excellent. I agree with Brent though, it’s annoying when you have to open multiple tabs, with gmail in 1 tab and reader in the other.