I like Google Reader, but lukewarm on the "Like" in Google Reader

-
Google Reader (possibly the Google Product I use the most in terms of time spent/day for non-work related purposes) added a few social features; one of which allows you to "Like" an article.

I've always been a fan of Reader. It's help change how I consume content on the Internet and is one of the foundations of a lot of the social interactions I have on the Web.

So I understand the motivation behind this new feature and in a vacuum this is a reasonable, solid feature.
  • I get the difference in semantics between "like" and "share" (a feature already available) and actually think this feedback to the author isn't a bad idea, but c'mon! It is a trifle confusing; especially since clicking on the name of someone who liked an article leads to her shared feed (instead of a feed of things he liked)
Perhaps, this will be a successful attempt at building a social graph and encouraging social interaction within Google products, which traditionally...well.....have been only moderately successful at it, or it may work as a way for Reader users to discover new content from like-minded individuals, but these seems like reaches and I'm not convinced about either use cases.

For me in the short-run there are just two problems with using the product as is.
  • I have (almost)no friends on my Google social graph (i.e. Gmail contacts) so none of my friends are seeing this stuff I'm liking.
  • I've already invested in pulling stuff I share into Facebook and FriendFeed and that where I "like" stuff. In fact, the duplication on Facebook and Friendfeed is already annoying me (Facebook added the FriendFeed-ish functionality to its Wall, and despite my best efforts to resist it and keep all my activity on FriendFeed, it won.)
In an ideal world, I could "like" something anywhere and my endorsement along with my identity and possible comments would travel with the article (or video or post or image) everywhere.

I can think of a couple of technical solutions to that problem:
  • one requiring a lot of co-operation and standards-like activity
  • the other is a product, that would need to fight for adoption
Both possible, but not going to happen immediately, which means for now I'm stuck figuring out how to deal with this new feature: Use it or just ignore it :)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The "Rescue Me" minisodes

-
I'm a fan of the FX show " Rescue Me " I was lukewarm when Dennis Leary mentioned the mini-sodes on his Daily Show visit. But, for the Rescue Me's particular situation it works really well. First the mini-sodes are actually good! they use characters from the story and tell a little anecdote they were clearly pretty cheap to produce through what seems like a little bit of complicated mess, they're distributing like crazy: YouTube , Crackle (Sony's site), the FX site (powered by Brightcove), Hulu These do exactly what they're supposed to do new episodes aren't coming till Spring 2009 , the fans need something to tide them over and keep the show in their memory: done potentially rope in new fans (short episodes, lower commitment to start watching the show) without freaking out old school media which is loathe to risk potential DVD sales by putting older episodes/clips online: done Its not completely clear to me how much this is by their own design, and
Read more

A short love letter to ~8 years on Google Search - 8 things I’m grateful for.

-
  After a few weeks off, I started a new gig within Google yesterday and it hit me that for the first time in almost eight years I won’t be working on some part of Google Search. Eight years ago, I told the team when I was interviewing that I was “looking for a place to call home for a while and grow there”. My experiences here more than met that need.  I used to write a regular “10 things about…” listy column for a while at a college newspaper. So in that style here’s 8 things (one for each year) I feel grateful to have experienced/learned in this time. Also, like that column which I banged out the night before it was due, this post is something that I don’t need to do, yet I feel somehow compelled to do (and so it’ll likely be longer and less crisp than it should be :-))    It actually is awesome to work on something so many people use and love, and that positively touches people’s lives. There’s a talk I give externally about Search and a line I often end up using is how the mission
Read more

Avengers Endgame: how trivial passions can nudge a career

-
Image
The Internets reminded me that today was exactly 2 years since Avenger's Endgame was released. I remember that day vividly for a few reasons I woke up before sunrise (way before the alarm went off).   I wore this (now that I think about it) borderline appropriate T-shir t and then..  .. showed up before 7:00am to watch that movie at Century Shoreline before going to work.  This is still the only movie that has a scene that can make me tear up consistently every single time (I know, I know - it's ridiculous).  That day was interesting from a work perspective for another reason. Along with a few other people at work (and with some crazy last-minute negotiating), we'd pulled together the Thanos Easter Egg on Search. It was typical of a lot of Easter Eggs on Search at the time, in that it wasn't really anybody's job, but we pushed it through because we loved the idea enough to do it. My day job on Media experience on Search helped me justify it a little bit I guess.
Read more