

Google Reader cutting internal social features, integrating into Google+ - heydenberk
http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2011/10/upcoming-changes-to-reader-new-look-new.html

======
nathanb
This is horrifyingly frustrating. It's like when they started adding people
from my email contacts to my Google Talk friends list or when they thought my
gtalk friends list needed to be all up in my Google Reader friends list.
Google don't seem to understand the natural partitioning of social spaces that
occurs in the real world.

(I do concur that Circles allow this partitioning to be modeled much more
accurately than most other social networking systems, but the partitioning
before was entirely organic and natural, not constructed. I will wait and see
how well they implement the integration before conclusively declaring Reader
to have jumped the shark, but honestly the social features ("just enough
social to get by", which is about as much social as I can put up with) were
the only things keeping me on Reader up until this point.

~~~
joebadmo
I have the exact opposite experience. I find it horribly frustrating to have
all these contacts in different services surfaced to me in weird inconsistent
ways.

GTalk are for me a subset of email contacts.

I'm ecstatic that G+ sharing is being integrated with GReader, because I share
a lot on GReader, but not everything I share is pertinent to all of my GReader
friends.

Ideally, they'll add a "public circles" feature or something like it, that
allows people to subscribe to specific subjects that I define and share to
specifically, which would be public, but not pushed into everyone's main
timelines.

[Edit: To expand a bit, I hope we'll be able to view those public circles in
Reader, since that's the ideal interface for it, and not just in Plus.]

[Edit 2: Thinking a bit more about it, I think I'd prefer to consume all Plus
content (except maybe photos, I really like the gallery layout) in the Reader
UI. I simply find it to be more efficient.

~~~
nathanb
Here's the problem: when I share something on Reader, I know that it will only
be seen on Reader by my other friends who have specifically opted-in to say "I
want to see stuff Nathan has shared". It is very reasonable to add a feature
allowing me to comment on these shared items, since that's a pretty big value
add.

When I share something to Plus, now it shows up to people who are on Plus.
They are not in "let's read my RSS feeds" mode, they're in "let's see what my
friends are up to" mode. My shared article, instead of being just another item
to read and potentially comment on, has intruded on their social activity. If
they wanted to read about quantum tunneling, they would have gone to Reader,
not to Plus. Plus is where you go to read about your cousin's new haircut.

~~~
joebadmo
Sure, I agree. But the problem is, what about the people who are on Reader to
read about souffles? They don't want to read about quantum tunneling. But you
sometimes post about both.

You're describing a distinction that exists on a service level now, that's
basically arbitrary and inconsistent. With everything pushed to Plus and
pulled back out of Plus, you can define not only social contexts like
'friends,' 'co-workers,' and 'family,' but also subject matter like 'souffles'
and 'quantum tunneling.' This is a good thing.

N.B. I think this will only be truly useful if they add public circles as I
describe earlier.

~~~
gchucky
Based on the arguments presented here, I agree that using the contexts that
users set up in G+ makes sense. Having said that, I think the part that isn't
clear to everyone (well, myself anyway) is whether things will be "pulled back
out of Plus". I really hope they will, but...

~~~
joebadmo
I wonder about it, too, but this gives me hope:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3019052>

------
nextparadigms
Google has a lot of redundant social features in other products. This makes
sense. I hope they remove the "like" buttons from Youtube, too, and replace
them with +1.

~~~
DannoHung
Where's dislike going to go?

I hope they take the Like button on youtube and make it Press +1 rather than
getting rid of like and dislike.

~~~
nextparadigms
I don't think the "dislike" button is good for the web. If you agree with
something vote it, if not don't. You don't have a dislike vote in electoral
campaigns.

~~~
anigbrowl
Strongly disagree. Sure, when there is a dislike button a few people use it in
an abusive way, but it's obvious that this is statistical noise. But when a
majority of votes on a YouTube video consists of 'dislikes' there's usually an
excellent reason. The result of having only positive voting is SEO, blogspam,
and content farming. Hell yes I want the option to downvote things.

~~~
notatoad
giving users a dislike option encourages crowdsourced censorship - people
don't just downvote content they don't like, they downvote content they
disagree with. look at reddit for a prime example of how allowing everybody to
downvote encourages groupthink. additionally, a publicly available dislike
button discourages content creation: people who might otherwise post original
content start to get nervous about how it will be received if there is a
capacity to express dislike.

a button to flag for review is one thing, but hiding content purely based on
public user input is generally not so great. imho, HN has a great system of
only allowing high-karma accounts to access the power of the downvote. it's a
similar idea to selecting community moderators to go over any content flagged
for review, but just a little more automated.

~~~
anigbrowl
I disagree. Reddit is extremely diverse in opinion because anyone can set up
their own sub-boards, and every content creator I know fears apathy more than
controversy - not least because many creative folk are poor self-promoters.
Overwhelmingly negative publicity can still lead to commercial success, viz.
Rebecca Black.

It will always be possible to search without preference filters, because
there's an economic incentive to providing all-inclusive indexing decoupled
from the ratings system. However, being able to express only approval
inevitably leads to a crowding-out problem; witness the ever-expanding ration
of ad to content and the plethora of competing buttons to
like/+1/tweet/digg/zzzz.

Lately I find myself filtering more and more; after blocking disqus, for
example, I can't see comments on most news stories any more and this has been
a signal improvement. I was a big booster for the democratization of the
communication commons back in the 1990s, demanding that every media outlet put
public comment facilities on its websites so that everyone could have their
say on news stories and so forth. Boy, did I get that one wrong.

------
rednaught
Each time a prompt for an alternative news reader appears, this one seems to
get some attention: <http://www.newsblur.com/>

I personally just use the newsreader built into Opera now. Just good enough
for my needs.

~~~
conesus
NewsBlur gets attention here because it's built by an active HNer, me. And
it's entirely open-source: <http://github.com/samuelclay>. Follow me on GitHub
to watch how quickly NewsBlur grows everyday.

In fact, the NewsBlur iPhone app is also open-source:
[https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur/tree/master/media/iph...](https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur/tree/master/media/iphone).
This might be very helpful to somebody learning how to write an iPhone app on
their own. I plan to blog about all the techniques and tricks I learned, from
the perspective of a Python/JavaScript developer.

~~~
abrowne
Just created an account and imported my Google Reader feeds. I like what I've
tried so far, but it doesn't look like there's an option to sort feeds by
oldest first. (Maybe no one else sorts this way, but it's the way that makes
sense for how I read feeds.)

~~~
conesus
By oldest first, you mean oldest stories first? This is a prioritized feature:
[http://getsatisfaction.com/newsblur/topics/reading_from_old_...](http://getsatisfaction.com/newsblur/topics/reading_from_old_to_new).
I've been sitting on it since very few users have asked for it, but I have
intentions of building it one day soon.

~~~
abrowne
Yes, exactly that. And personally, I'd make it a global option, but a per-feed
option -- either in addition or instead of the global option -- would be fine
with me as well.

------
losvedir
Honestly, I've always been extremely confused by the Google Reader sharing
mechanism. I use Reader all the time, but I've never been clear on who exactly
the shares go to. This is much better, IMO.

------
Oompa
Do many people use these features? Most of the people that I know who use
Google Reader, myself included, just use it as an RSS reader. Sending it to
other social networks is the one thing that I do use, and they won't be
changing that.

~~~
hollerith
>Do many people use these features?

I am a heavy user of the information on how many users are subscribed to a
particular feed, which could be considered a social feature. (The information
is behind the "show details" link in the "view onto" a feed.)

also, I am subscribed to one other user's "shared link blog" (a view assembled
by Reader of that user's "shared items"), which the OP says is definitely
going away, and three users are subscribed to my shared link blog.

The "shared link blog" that I am subscribed to is at
<http://www.google.com/reader/shared/patrissimo> although admittedly it is no
longer active as the writer (actually, "editor" or "sharer" is more accurate)
has moved to using Twitter for sharing links (which I do not like as much).

~~~
gchucky
Sorry, I'm a bit lost. Is there an intrinsic difference between just following
someone in Reader and "shared link blogs", or am I just getting tripped up on
naming?

~~~
hollerith
There is a big difference, which is likely to become apparent just by
inspecting an example of a shared link blog. Let me repeat the URL of the one
I am subscribed to:

<http://www.google.com/reader/shared/patrissimo>

The difference between an ordinary blog and a shared link blog is that in a
shared link blog, the posts (I want to call them "items" but know of no one
else who calls them that, so "posts" it is) are written by people other than
the owner (i.e., "patrissimo") of the shared link blog. All "patrissimo" did
to put the post in the shared link blog was to check the box labelled "Share"
or the box labelled "Share with note" at the bottom of every post in Reader
(where the box labelled "Mark as read" is also to be found).

Well, more precisely, if he checked "Share with note", he also had to type in
text of the note to be attached to the post. And there is a bookmarklet that
he could have used instead of checking one of the two aforementioned boxes.

~~~
gchucky
Right, I get that. So when they say they're going to retire "friending,
following and shared link blogs", presumably that means that the link above
will no longer exist.

My question, then, was whether or not we'll still be able to share within
Reader and see items shared by other people. Based on what I've read on this
post and elsewhere, it seems that the answer to my question is no - instead
that functionality is being moved to G+. Which seems to me to be a rather
strange interaction.

~~~
hollerith
Well, even if we'll still be able to share within Reader, what I like a lot
about way it currently works is that the information about who shared what is
available to services other than Google without any hacky screen scraping. I
am not going to take the trouble to "curate" (or vote on or whatever you want
to call it) web pages or blog posts if the fruits of my curation (or voting)
are going to be restricted to one company's walled garden.

Note that making the information public might not be the current _default_
behavior of shared link blogs, but if it is not the current default behavior,
then for those users like me and "patrissimo" who have opted to make the
information public, the information is (as far as I know -- I guess it could
be disallowed by Google Reader's terms of service) available to all services
on a non-discriminatory basis.

------
armandososa
I actually like these news. I've been using Reader since it came out (what's
it? 6 years?) but never get to use to their social features.

Also: star, like, share, tag. Those are too many options. Give me a +1 and a
"Share" button and I'm set.

I thought this discussion needed a thread that wasn't all "I hate change".

~~~
icebraining
No, they're not too many options. (Well, possibly Star, since it's basically a
Tag).

Tagging is very different from sharing or liking. It's a feature for
organizing specific items (aka posts) for yourself, not for others.

------
zavulon
I really don't care about any social features in Google Reader. The only thing
that matters to me is I can continue easily subscribe and read RSS feeds. And
with a "brand new design that we hope you love", I sincerely hope they don't
fuck that up.

~~~
tung
I can't wait for those huge margins to waste my screen space.

~~~
icebraining
<http://userstyles.org/stylish>

~~~
tung
Stylish themes are often out of date and/or completely change the layout of
the site when all I really want is a small tweak here or there.

------
RexRollman
I worry that, in an effort to compete with Facebook, Google is going to ruin
everything I liked about their products.

------
mxavier
I'm sure Google considered this but I hope that by default, my feed
subscriptions are shared with nobody in my Google+ circles and that I have to
opt those people in. Doing otherwise would be the equivalent of dumping the
contents of your browser bookmarks for all your friends to see. There may be
some things people subscribe to that they'd prefer others didn't know about.

~~~
lukesandberg
sharing is already opt in on Google Reader. So you would have to click "share"
and then (most likely) select a circle, there will probably be a default
circle but it won't just start spamming G+ whenever you read an article

~~~
omellet
I realize that. The problem is that they block things by URL in whatever web
proxy they use, and if content for Google Reader is coming from a blocked url,
it's not going to work for me anymore.

It works both ways; I can actually send mail from my Gmail account via Google
Reader, even though they block Gmail. I can't read it, of course, but it's a
bit of a hole in their security plan.

~~~
lukesandberg
Who is they? are you worried about not being able to access reader anymore
because access to G+ may be blocked? That is interesting. Do you have trouble
with the new share box on google search because it is a G+ product? Where are
you from?

------
hesselink
Interesting that all the replies here are negative. Am I really the only one
who welcomes these changes? Of the people I want to share with, only a few
also use Reader. There are much more of them on Google+. This also allows for
more fine-grained sharing, so I won't have to share programming-related posts
with people who are not interested in that kind of article.

------
omellet
I'm mostly upset that Google Reader will now be blocked at work, because the
IT dept blocks all social network sites.

~~~
JoshTriplett
Google Reader had social features before.

Github has social features, too; perhaps they should try to block that and see
how well that goes over. :)

------
beej71
Without some sort of "public circles" option on Google+, people won't be able
to subscribe to my "techstuff" feed--I'd need to manually "subscribe" them.
Pretty icky.

~~~
r00fus
Do shared circles count as "public circles"?

[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_plus_users_can_n...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_plus_users_can_now_share_their_circles.php)

------
ukdm
Awaits the "Best alternatives to Reader" post appearing on HN

~~~
bostonvaulter2
<http://newsblur.com>

~~~
vertr
It's nice that newsblur is maintained by a HNer, but the aesthetics of it are
a real turn off for me.

~~~
natesm
This isn't exactly the best first impression ever:
<http://i.imgur.com/r2vwo.png>

~~~
conesus
Went ahead and fixed that:
[https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur/commit/658a15701af7b6...](https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur/commit/658a15701af7b641d7bc5a3d20af241709cf3b8b)

~~~
natesm
Thank you!

------
MatthewPhillips
The first thing I do when I log into Google Reader is mark all "shared items"
as read, without reading any of them. I don't want my RSS reader to be social.
I don't want my unread count to reflect sources that I didn't opt into. The
sooner I can disable all social aspects of Google Reader, the sooner I stop
looking for an alternative.

~~~
omaranto
May I ask why you decided to subscribe to other people's shared items if you
don't like reading them?

~~~
MatthewPhillips
I followed these people on Buzz. If you unfollow them on Reader you also
unfollow them on Buzz, or at least that's the way it used to work. If that's
changed please let me know how to unfollow people on Reader without affecting
Buzz or Plus.

------
twelvedigits
One vote against. I love Google Reader. I have intelligent friends that share
actively on it. I don't use Google Plus. I don't know if those friends use
Google Plus. Now, I won't read the articles that my friends are sharing. I
also expect sharing will go down as Google forcibly alters user behavior and
manages an adoption problem.

In effect, Google is now impeding my access to great information. That's
counter to their mission, isn't it? And it's risky to do this to a very loyal
user group. Google Reader users are passionate about this product.

------
rachelbythebay
Great. I knew this day would come.

Guess I need to speed up my work on a Google Reader replacement.

~~~
heydenberk
The latter is _exactly_ what I thought!

------
captn3m0
I find it ironic that the blog post does not have a "Share to google+", or the
"+1 Button"

~~~
myhf
It does have a +1 button. Maybe you have it adblocked.

------
willy1234x1
None of this is frustrating and it shouldn't come to a shock to anyone. Google
stated that they were going to deeply integrate Google+ into all its products.
This is them just following through.

------
flarg
And yet the blog post itself is linked to Digg and not G+

Oh Google :(

------
shaggy
Forgive me for what might be huge ignorance and stupidity on my part but does
this mean that I'm now required to have a G+ account to use Reader?

~~~
icebraining
Louis Gray (G+ evangelist, hired by Google) said in a different site[1] the
following:

 _To clarify, Google Reader remains a stand-alone product. What is being
announced is threefold: 1) Addition of sharing to Google+. 2) A new modern
design. 3) Retiring of the dedicated sharing model.

This statement ( It will be impossible to use Google Reader as a standalone
product) is incorrect. You can continue reading your feeds in Reader
independent of Google+._

So it seems we (non-G+ users) won't be affected.

[1]: [http://www.extremetech.com/computing/101011-6-google-
reader-...](http://www.extremetech.com/computing/101011-6-google-reader-
replacements#dsq-comment-23863)

------
tristan_louis
The interesting thing is how they are cutting some features to "improve" it. I
suspect that when it's done, it will be impossible to send items to Twitter or
Facebook from it (you'll have to send things to Google+ instead).

It's also a big question as to what you can do to save your starred items
moving forward. Anyone wants to build a starred items to delicious exporter?

~~~
dt7
The article says "in addition to Google+, you'll still be able to share to
almost any service using Send To". Also, I'm not sure what you mean about
starred items, they're not going anywhere.

~~~
tristan_louis
Today, I can have a service that looks at my link blog (generated by clicking
share) and its RSS feed. By doing so, it can then route new items to Twitter
or other services. Reading what the blog entry says, it looks like "Send To"
will be the way to route things to other services instead of using Share.

Today, by just clicking "share" I can send the information to Twitter. What
the new experience will be, I suspect, is that I will have to click "send to"
then choose the service I want to share to. 2 steps instead of one.

It's a small product difference but one that will reduce friction for Google
Plus while increasing it for "other" services.

