Google Reader Adds Support for PubSubHubbub

It's all about the “real time” now, with every site and service out there adding this type of features, whether they benefit it or not. And, with Twitter taking over as the fastest and most popular way to share stories, some are even quick to declare RSS/Atom feeds dead. But not if Google has anything to say about it, as a new distribution protocol, PubSubHubbub, has now been integrated into Google Reader, the Internet giant's feed reader app.

“Speed is very important at Google, and the Reader team is no exception. One way in which we take speed into account is to try to make consumption of feeds be as efficient as possible. We also want to make it as fast (and as easy) as possible to interact with your Reader data on the rest of the web,” Mihai Parparita, one of the Google software engineers who worked on the project, wrote. “We're therefore happy to announce that Reader has begun adoption of the PubSubHubbub protocol, beginning with the publishing of our shared items.“

PubSubHubbub is a new protocol that won't replace Atom or RSS feeds but will bring them up to date with the “modern” web, and it works as an extension to the current protocols. Users have to subscribe to a new feed just like they always did but after this, if the feed has a “hub” server set up, the reader app doesn't have to constantly ping the source for new content. After setting up a hub server, the publisher just has to “notify” it when new content is available and the hub then does all the work by actively pushing the feed to the subscribers, not having to wait to be pinged. This allows new content to reach subscribers in a matter of seconds.

Google Reader has started adopting the new protocol and the first step is supporting it for “Shared Items,” meaning that any service that implements the protocol can now be notified immediately of the new content. The Google Reader support was a “20% project” of Mihai Parparita, Brett Slatkin and Brad Fitzpatrick and, for now, the only major service to support PubSubHubbub is FriendFeed. However, the aim is much greater and, as the project picks up traction, it should eventually replace the current feed system to allow it to compete with the much faster Twitter and even FriendFeed.