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Google Reader and Talk Get Friendly
Posted by Adam Pash at 3:00 AM on December 18, 2007
Google Reader enthusiasts have likely already noticed that Reader has now integrated with Google Talk to make your shared items available to your Google Talk friends inside Reader and vice versa. That means that whenever you share an item in Google Reader, that item will automatically pop up in any of your GTalk friends' Reader accounts under the Friends' shared items section. This is a simple but brilliant tweak to Reader, bringing your friends' favourite items into your Reader account without any work from you; if you don't care for the content a friend regularly shares, you can choose to selectively hide friends.
Tags: google reader | google talk | newsreader | rss | social networking | top
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
mahalie
Posted 12:35 PM 17/12/07
Just noticed this feature, very web 2.0 of them. Actually, I think think this is quite useful. I post my shared items as 'recently read' on my blog, but people don't examine the sidebar that closely often. I'm guessing people will use it via reader a lot more often.
One issue though, I have a 'john' showing up who shares a lot of religious stuff. I can't tell who he is, there's no profile for his username and no complete google user name so I can't figure out who he is from my contact list! I want to exclude him but thought I'd double-check to make sure he's not a cousin or something...
mahalie
da7id_n
Posted 11:59 AM 17/12/07
I like this addition in theory, but they didn't build anything in to control the delivery of your shared content. My case in point:
Previously, I had only given the link to my shared items out to one person (my GF) and in addition to articles that I thought she would find interesting or useful, I also shared a lot of fashion blog posts containing shirts, shoes, dresses, lingerie, etc. that I thought she would look hot in :)
Now I get to explain to all of my gtalk/greader using friends why I think women's clothing is so damned interesting...
Seems like there should have been some warning that they were about to throw open our shared items, and perhaps have given us some way of limiting which friends would receive our shared feed.
da7id_n
wererogue
Posted 1:58 PM 17/12/07
It's also pretty annoying that if a friend shares something you already read, it's marked "unread" in the new list. I love some of the lh posts, but I don't need to read them four times!
wererogue
dmac
Posted 12:47 PM 17/12/07
I like it. It's pretty easy to 'hide' people (and then you can access them on your profile page), and I've already come across shared stuff from my friends.
dmac
jyjohnson
Posted 12:38 PM 17/12/07
I wish they would support 'private' feeds before they add other features...
jyjohnson
freddybob
Posted 2:55 PM 17/12/07
There are a lot of people very unhappy about this. A lot of privacy concerns.
[groups.google.com]
It's a nice idea but I'd like to choose who I share with rather than choose who not to share with. It should be an opt-in not an opt-out.
Also, has anyone with a googlemail account got it working properly?
freddybob
vesuvian
Posted 3:14 PM 17/12/07
oh goodie! now everyone knows I'm manic-depressive!
vesuvian
annaddison
Posted 6:40 PM 17/12/07
I love it! It's easy to hide people and just be aware that I'm sharing with all when I share. It would be nice to have two levels of sharing... one "as dust in the wind" and the other to bffs. : )
annaddison
freddybob
Posted 2:22 AM 18/12/07
Does the Hide button stop someone from seeing your shared items or just stop you from seeing theirs?
freddybob