14 DAY TRIAL // Google Reader may be far from perfect but it is used by millions of people. And while it has had some social features for a while, the possibility to share items for example, it is just now starting to have a social feature that people may actually use. Now Reader lets users search for other people's shared items and also “like” posts, which instantly shares them with everyone.
“Instead of sharing your items with others and hoping they reciprocate, you can now find people with public shared items and subscribe to their shared items with one click. Use our new people search feature (powered by Google profiles) to look for people who have public shared items,” Jenna Bilotta wrote on the Google Reader blog.
To help users refine their search Reader also offers some filters when looking for people to follow so they can browse by name, location or topic, all of this from inside the reader. This makes it a lot easier to find new people to follow but the integration with Google profiles goes deeper as now you can add a link to your Reader shared items to your profile.
The biggest new feature though allows users to “like” an item which instantly adds them to the list of fans of that blog post or news story. So now if you want to let your friends know that you liked their posts or even let an author at a large publication know that, Google Reader offers a one-click solution (or one key, if you have keyboard shortcuts enabled you can hit the 'L' key) and then everyone reading that item will know that you also enjoyed it.
But Google also introduced some feature for those who actually want to share less, or with fewer people. Up until now an item could be shared with the world or no one with no middle ground, but with the new options introduced this can be refined so you can share the boring work stuff with just your colleagues and keep the more risqué content you may have from the eyes of your boss.