Google Reader Gets Magical

I try not to spend too much time pimping Google’s products in this space, but let’s face it: we make really cool stuff, and whether I work for the company or not, I absolutely adore most of our products.  Fact is, our engineers and product teams cook up tools that are really useful for those who are ready to embrace the digital future.  Google Reader is one of those tools, and the team has just released a set of features that have got me plain jazzed.

Google Reader is a tool for pulling interesting content to a central inbox via “feeds.”  Almost every website on the web that publishes regular updates also sends out a feed that can be subscribed to via various tools.  As a result, instead of clicking through a long list of bookmarked sites to see if there’s something new to read, you can just subscribe to that site’s feed and all the new content will build up in your inbox.  (If you want to subscribe to Tropophilia’s feed, click here.)

Though it got off to a rocky start, Reader has been incrementally socializing and personalizing itself over the past two years.  First it let you share items publicly; later, those shared items became directly available to your contacts who also use Reader.  Recently, the team introduced the ability to “like” an item in addition to sharing it, and it also created a section of “recommended” feeds based on your reading, sharing, and liking history (although it was a little hard to find).  It has also given users new ways to share with the “send to” feature that lets you post to Twitter and other third party sites.

At first, it was confusing as to why there was both a “like” and a “share” feature, with many people not understanding when they would do one without doing the other.  This week, the Reader team cleared that up by delivering the punch line:

• You can now sort any feed (including the comprehensive feed) by “magic.”  The sorting is based on what Reader has determined you’re interested in, as reflected by your reading/liking/sharing history.
• The “recommended feeds” feature now has prime real estate in the main sidebar in a new “Explore” section.
• There is a new “popular items” feed (also sortable by your personalized “magic”) that shows you what items have been popular across the web recently.

It’s now clear why there is a distinct “like” button.  If you enjoyed an article but don’t necessarily want to share it with your contacts, you can “like” it and Reader will feed that signal into its personalizing algorithm.  The more you “like” things, the more recommendations Reader can make (and the more Reader can provide everyone with a sense of what’s popular on the web at any given moment).

With these few moves, Google Reader will likely rejoin Twitter as one of the first places I go when I have time to spare and want to see what’s going on in the world.  I have my trusted feeds that I have added myself, but now I also have the ability to sort those feeds according to what I’ll likely find most important or interesting.  In addition, I am now constantly offered new sources of information to consider adding to my diet of feeds.  I can quickly click a feed, browse its items, see how often its authors post, and decide whether to subscribe or pass.  If I pass, it is removed and replaced by a new feed suggestion.  This adds a new layer of tailored serendipity, letting me discover new voices and points of view within the topics that interest me.

Finally, the popular items feeds adds an additional layer of true serendipity that lets me take the pulse of what’s buzzing on the web.  Add those improvements to the fact that Reader aggregates the reading recommendations made by my friends, and it truly is one of the most customized and personalized sources of information aggregation on the market.

One of the observations being made about my generation’s expectations for news is that we no longer believe we should have to go find out what’s happening or being said in the world — instead, we expect that information will find us.  By rolling out these new features, the Reader team is delivering a product that meets (and in some ways, exceeds) those expectations.

Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of Flickr user optionthis.