14 DAY TRIAL // What's the latest up-and-coming social network? Give it six months and the answer might surprise you. Google is on a roll launching one social feature after another, having recently extended some of the functionality in Google Reader with “likes” and the possibility to find and follow other users. And, on the same day the Internet giant bolted on some social functionality to iGoogle with 19 new gadgets it also added more social features to Google Reader, like the possibility to share the items you like on Twitter or Facebook.
Sharing content on a number of different sites is hardly anything new anymore but it does add a new layer of interactivity to Google Reader. All the usual social networks, blogging platforms and social bookmarking sites are supported, like Facebook, MySpace, Digg, StumbleUpon, Blogger and, of course, Twitter. Users can enable the services they want to use in a new section in the Settings page and there is also the possibility to create a custom “Send To” link so they can share the items just about anywhere.
In the last big update Google Reader added the ability to search for other users and follow them even if they weren't in the user's Contacts list. Now the search giant is taking it a step forward by enabling users to subscribe to the blogs, photos, FriendFeed or Twitter streams of any of the people they are following. This way all of their updates will show up in Reader, allowing them to keep up from one location rather than jumping from profile to profile.
But it's not just the social features that are getting all the attention as Google has updated the “Mark all as read” button too, adding some much needed options. So far it was all or nothing but, if a feed gets too crowded, users can now selectively mark as read only the items that are older than one day, one week or two weeks.