Google Reader and Its Friends

Logging in my Google Reader this morning, the first thing that popped up in front of my sleepy eyes was a window like I hadn't seen another before, that made me question what had happened, for my sleepy eyes weren't all that thrilled to find new things and my sleepy mind was all but open to grasping new concepts or start interpreting things.

I said that I hadn't seen such a window before because it was from Reader, which was basically WYSISWYG (what you see is what you get), with updates announced on the blog and so on. It drew my attention to the fact that friends could see whatever it was I deemed interesting enough to click the "Share" button provided. This is a sort of a crossover between Google Talk (the chat in Gmail, as it is also known) and the Reader that reveals to your friends the shared items you choose, in the Reader left-hand navigation area under "Friends' shared items".

Don't be afraid, in case you're fed up with it, have preferences or you just didn't want to do this in the first place, they have "provided an option to clear your shared items in case you don't want your friends to see what you've shared in the past. We've also added a Settings page so you can choose which friends you see and invite friends who aren't yet sharing to try it out", as Chrix Finne announced.

Despite the cool new feature, they have gone to extensive lengths to make users understand that this is not the finite product and that is still a work in progress: "We know you might not see every feature you want just yet, so we hope you will play with it and send us your feedback." At the moment, this feature is available only for the English version, but it will soon cross-language and be available for most people that aren't all that familiar with the most spoken language on the globe.