Reader is an easy-to-use advanced platform to read news feeds
Google Reader goes beyond simply reading blogs and news sites or reading RSS feeds through portals or clients
Reader users can find, add, search, save, share, email, and tag syndicated & news content, in a sense, coloring it with their own experience with the inline widget
Google Reader incorporates the del.icio.us approach
Users are encouraged to categorize content leveraging their own chosen tags
Shared Items feature
- Shared Items feature is a personal social bookmark, like del.icio.us
- What have you shared, or „bookmarked“
- Instead of simple browser bookmarking
- Items are always available to user & friends
Comma-separated taging allows Reader to organize content
Shared Items is a personal site (with RSS) users can share “their news??? with their friends: http://google.com/reader/shared/08363259999826738566
Offers Unique Ability to Find Feeds by Search and Bundles
Simply put a URL, a search term, or an RSS feed into „Add Subscription“ box (below) to add subscriptions
- Direct RSS URL
- Site URL (will discover feed)
- Search terms (will return feeds based on relevance)
Google offers prepackaged, topic-based bundles to make adding content simple
- A bundle is a prepackaged collection of news feeds, as chosen by Google
Search for “pink is the new blog??? easily finds blogs and allows user to “subscribe???
Assortment of content bundles including News, Sports, Fun
News content bundles offers feeds from BBC, Google News, ESPN
Google wants you to never leave Google
Google Reader is embedded into the „Google Universe“ through the Google ID
- Google Reader allows a simple interface for maintaining, reading, and finding new content (news, blogs, alerts, etc)
- Google makes it easy to „read“ Google Reader feeds through widgets the Google home page (www.google.com/ig) and Google Desktop (desktop.google.com/)
Google Reader offers a widget for Google Homepage
Google Reader Success, Adoption and Technologies
When Google Reader Application Launched? October 10, 2005
Subscriber numbers: N/A
- The reception of Google Reader has been good enough to draw users away from the gold standard NetNewsWire.
No Google Reader revenue model
Technology
- Integrated into active server queries via AJAX
Success and failure of the Technology and Web 2.0
- The initial version of Google Reader was heavy and slow
- Google Reader is too young to come to a conclusion of success.
- The popular adoption of RSS reading has been slow
- Problem to-date has been based on complexity of technology
- Google Reader does not require any technical proficiency
Comments (2)
I tried to move to Google, but I find Bloglines faster and easier to use… I love mist Google products, but I’m not sold on the Reader.
I love the way things work better. Google Reader is so web 2.0 — so easy to use. Try it out — it is a lot more dynamic than bloglines…
1. What is a feed? What does it mean to subscribe?
Websites publish lists of updates—called “feeds”—that indicate when new content has been posted. When you subscribe to a feed, Google Reader starts monitoring that feed for updates. You don’t have to give any personal information, it doesn’t cost a dime, and it’s easy to unsubscribe.
2. How can I subscribe to feeds?
If you know the address of the feed you want to subscribe to, you can just click on the “Add Subscriptions” link and paste the address in the text field that appears. Otherwise, our directory offers an easy way to find and add feeds. Finally, you can find your own feeds.
3. Why doesn’t the entire story show up in the expanded view?
Google Reader gathers up what the content owners and publishers provide. Some sites send out updates with entire stories; others give just a headline or brief summary of the story. If you want to see a story in its entirety, simply click on the gray arrow icon and you’ll go directly to the source website. You can also contact the publisher directly and ask that they include the full content in their feed.
4. How can I see the original source for what I’m reading?
Click the gray arrow icon in any item to go directly to the website where the item came from. In the expanded view, you can also click on the title of the item.
6. How does sharing work?
Sharing is one of our favorite features. In fact, we like it so much that we’ve got a whole page of questions devoted to it. Find out more about sharing.
7. What are tags and how do I use them?
Tags provide a way to organize items that interest you. You can use any word as a tag. For example, you might have a tag for your favorite posts (”favs”), or a tag for items you want to follow up on (”follow-up”). Tags can also be used for sharing. To add a tag to a post, simply click “add tags” and enter the relevant tags.
8. How does auto-sort work?
When viewing all items, you can click “View settings” to choose a sorting order. Auto-sort works by prioritizing subscriptions with fewer items. This means that your friend’s blog with an item a month will not be drowned out by higher volume sites such as the New York Times because we’ll raise it to the top.
9. Can I read my subscription starting with the oldest items?
Certainly. Click on “View settings” and select “Sort by oldest”. This will display items from the last 30 days, in the order they were posted. This is particularly useful for personal journals and other sites for which the order is important. To go back even further, sort your items “newest first” and use our infinite scrolling to go back all the way to the first item we ever tracked for this subscription.
10. Can I import an existing subscription list?
If you are switching from another feed reader, you can import your existing subscriptions into Google Reader. To do this, you first have to export your subscriptions in a standard format called OPML—see the next question for information on how to export. Once you have your OPML file, go back to Google Reader and click “settings” at the top right, then “import/export.” Choose the location of your OPML file and click “import”; Google Reader will add all the subscriptions in the list to your account and start checking them for updates.
11. How do I export my subscriptions from another feed reader?
Most feed readers allow you to export your subscriptions as an OPML file. Although we don’t support non-Google applications, we’ve compiled a list of relevant links with instructions on how to export your subscriptions from various popular feed readers. If you can’t find your former feed reader in the list, or if these instructions don’t work for you, we suggest consulting your feed reader’s help documentation.
myYahoo http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/005384.html
Google Personalized Homepage http://persistent.info/archives/2006/05/04/igoogle-opml
NetVibes http://blog.netvibes.com/?2005/10/08/7-opml-export
Bloglines http://www.bloglines.com/help/faq#export
Newsgator Online http://newsgator.mykbpro.com/Article_43256.aspx
Rojo http://www.rojo.com/corporate/help/faqs/using-rojo-managing-feeds-in-rojo/can-i-export-my-subscriptions-from-rojo/
Safari bookmarks http://dcostanet.net/wordpress/2005/06/13/export-safari-rss-feeds-via-opml/
Firefox live bookmarks http://efinke.com/opml-support/
12. What is a Google account?
A Google Account is a single email address and password that gives you access to various Google services, including Google Reader, Google Groups, Google Alerts, Froogle Shopping List and your Google Personalized Homepage. If you’ve used any of those services before, you already have a Google Account. If you have a Gmail account, you can use your Gmail username and password to sign in. And if you don’t yet have a Google Account, you can create one here.
13. What are RSS and Atom?
RSS and Atom are the two most popular feed formats. Like most readers, Google Reader supports both formats.
14. What are Google Reader’s system requirements?
For the best user experience, Google Reader requires an up-to-date browser. We recommend that you use Firefox (download: Windows Mac Linux) or Safari (download: Mac), but Internet Explorer will work too (download: Windows).