In particular, in using them in conjunction with the Google+Blog WP plugin I mentioned the other day, and with commentary on the state of Google Reader.
The Down Side:
- From a reading perspective, Reader (esp. pre-screen redesign) was hugely more effective in skimming and sharing data than it is at present. The tighter line spacing (when is the “Display Density” option from GMail coming to Reader?) of the old Reader made skimming the mass updates Shared material (sniff) wildly more efficient than it is now, and orders of magnitude better than with the highly threaded and expanded Plus.
- I’m sharing less stuff than I used to (some might consider that an Up Side), both because the material to be shared is more scarce (vs. what used to be available in Reader, shared from others) and because, since each thing I share now becomes its own Plus item and, by extension, blog entry, I pick and choose a lot more carefully. Where I might have done four or five shared Reader items on a topic as it developed or I discovered new perspectives, I wait until I find the very best. Noise is reduced, but so is signal (and timeliness).
The Up Side:
- I’m generating more blog posts this way — and none of them are “Unblogged Bits” digests (which at times threatened to dominate my blog).
- I’m able to categorize the posts more effectively (even though it’s a manual effort).
- I’m getting more views on blog posts than before (probably because my tweets that come from them have actual titles).
- I’m getting more comments on blog posts (both directly to the blog and shared from the Plus items, since the plugin pulls in any comments from the Plus items, even after the post is made). (Interestingly, the comments from Plus come across with the Google “true name” on them, vs. the nicknames that folks here tended to use; also, since they come in with the plus.google.com user as their URL, it means everyone has the same Gravatar; I might tweak that in my Users registration, if I get a chance.)
One thing I’m still working out is handling new blog posts that I actually (gasp) write on the blog itself. As currently configured, I’m not putting such posts into Plus because then they’d bounce back as a Google+Blog post. What I will probably end up doing is turning on the Google+Blog option to only post items from Plus to WP that have a specified #hashtag. (Though what I’d really like, and have asked for as a feature, is the reverse: post everything to WP except for items that have a specified #hashtag.)
So, in some ways, I think what I presently have is working better for my blog in some definite, non-trivial ways than what I was doing before — but I’d be even happier with my Reader sharing back. Really, truly, Google.
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http://lifehacker.com/5856188/readersharer-brings-sharing-options-back-to-google-reader-in-firefox-and-chrome
Interesting — but what are the pulling the Shared items to, or from?
I tried doing a bit of looking, but all the pages are in Chinese, which doesn’t make me excited to leap on them.
Watching and waiting …