In prep for the impending de-socialization of Google Reader (sniff), I’m figuring out how to get Google Plus to replace it
I’ve been pondering a content-based approach. Right now, folks who follow me in Reader get a deluge of miscellaneous items — whimsical and serious. I’ve often wondered at whether there are folks who are interested in one vs. the other.
It’s easy enough in Reader to skim through share titles, so it hasn’t struck me as a big deal. But it’s not nearly as easy to do that sort of skimming in Plus (one of its, ahem, drawbacks). In some ways, it’s much more like Twitter — and in both Plus and Twitter, to date, I’ve been very selective about what I post, usually leaning to the personal (on Twitter) and whimsical (Plus).
So I’m thinking of creating two new circles on Plus — call them Whimsical and Serious. I’ll take the folks currently following me in Reader (and probably everyone else in my Circles except for the folks who I’m just following) and put them into both groups, but offer them the opportunity to “opt out” from one or the other. Not interested in my being all screedy about the Religious Right? I’ll pull you out of “Serious.” Bored to tears with cute Doctor Who graphics? I can pull you out of Whimsical.
Hmmmmm … though, on the other hand, how do my followers know what circles of mine they are in, or how to get to just one or the other?
Okay, so maybe that won’t work.
The other problem is that I don’t want this stuff stuck in Plus. I want it (as with my current Reader-spawned) Unblogged Bits) pulled into my blog. There are some unofficial ways to generate an RSS feed from Plus … but that only works for Public posts — stuff that goes to any particular circle(s) isn’t visible in that fashion. And all that gets generated are the titles — the spiffy commentary notes go away completely.
That’s a big problem to me, even if I leave off of the Whimsical/Serious thing.
*Sigh*
Irksome move, Google.
All I know is I love getting your Google Reader posts. It’s much easier than following the links in your blog posts. I hope Google+ doesn’t ruin that.
This looks potentially promising for posting from Plus to a WordPress blog: http://www.evolutionarydesigns.net/blog/2011/10/17/post-your-google-plus-updates-to-your-wordpress-blog/#
I’m not quite sure what’s going to happen, Avo. It does not appear that it will be possible to see what I’m sharing (i.e., no sharing at all) in Reader any more, which is the piece that Google is snapping off. Instead, I can share stuff into Plus. Which will be even less easy to skim through than my Unblogged Bits posts here.
As far as I can tell, though, the “Unblogged Bits” framework is going away, at least from Reader. No sharing or sharing with comments means nothing to pull into either Twitter or a blog post.
Les was mentioning stuff that will post from Plus to Twitter directly. Not sure if that’s as useful.
And the item I noted above will potentially generate blog posts from Plus posts … which will then be visible in Reader as well. (For that matter, I can generate an RSS feed of public Plus posts that would be visible in Reader.)
I suspect that, whatever, it will require adjustments to how I generate / share content, and how folks receive it. Unfortunately.
I keep trying to think of how Google has not screwed the pooch on this one, but it still comes off as a major pooch-screw. /TomArnoldFromTrueLies
Reader has been a daily delight of “what are friends and family reading now”. People with a gift for finding so much cool stuff.
@George While I understand why Google is doing this, I think they’ve handled it poorly. They could have integrated the Reader functions into Plus (they way they did with Buzz), and still kept the Sharing bits in place. It was a bad tactical decision on their part.
The first time I went to click on the Note in Reader bookmarklet and it came up with an error, I was actually quite sad. And when I glance at my tab list and see the Reader tab there, it’s not the automatic “Hey, I should check and see what’s going on there” it was only yesterday.
And, as folks have noted elsewhere (self included), the updated interface, while not the screaming horror that some would have it, is less compact and thus less skimmable than the previous one. Making Reader that much less useful.