Google Reader's Social Features Merging With Google+

MrSeb writes "Moments ago, Google announced that Reader, as soon as next week, will be moving closer to Google+. Many of its social features (friending, following, sharing) are being buried in favor of Google+ equivalents. Fortunately, Reader has always had the ability to export your RSS subscriptions and feed groups in the widely-accepted OPML format, and over the next few days this will be expanded to include your shared items, friends, likes, and starred items as well." Update: 10/21 01:15 GMT by S : Updated headline and summary to reflect that Reader will be sticking around as a standalone product. According to Google, only its social features are being merged.

Comments

Wrong summary

[Anonymous Coward]

From the first comment in the linked article:

"To clarify, Google Reader remains a stand-alone product. What is being announced is threefold: 1) Addition of sharing to Google+. 2) A new modern design. 3) Retiring of the dedicated sharing model.

This statement ( It will be impossible to use Google Reader as a standalone product) is incorrect. You can continue reading your feeds in Reader independent of Google+."

Re:Wrong summary

[lofoforabr]

That's good. When Google migrated my email address to a google account, I lost access to some services, including Orkut (who cares?) and Google+, because Google Apps (for domains) doesn't support Google Profiles yet.
So, there's no way for me to retrieve or access my Google+ account (I created the account there before Google migrated my email).
It would be a shame if Reader couldn't be accessed without Google+.

Non-social uses not affected

[icebraining]

Louis Gray (G+ evangelist, hired by Google) said:

To clarify, Google Reader remains a stand-alone product. What is being announced is threefold: 1) Addition of sharing to Google+. 2) A new modern design. 3) Retiring of the dedicated sharing model.

This statement ( It will be impossible to use Google Reader as a standalone product) is incorrect. You can continue reading your feeds in Reader independent of Google+.

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/101011-6-google-reader-replacements#dsq-comment-23863

Re:Non-social uses not affected

[MagicM]

Exactly. And from here:

And in addition to Google+, you'll still be able to share to almost any service using Send To.

It sounds like they may give you ways to share to Twitter and Facebook.

Re:Non-social uses not affected

[whoop]

Man, who are you gonna believe. Some joker on Blogspot, where anyone can make an account, or a place named ExtremeTech.com. My underpants moved a little just typing that domain.

And for everyone with Google Apps accounts that are in panic mode, see this from Dave Girouard from Google Apps. It's just "days" away.

Meh

[spinkham]

As long as it still works as a sync agent for Reeder on Mac and iOS, I could care less. Reeder is so much better than the Reader interface anyway.

Re:This sucks!

[Mike]

Sorry to reply to my own message, but I just found out the synopsis of the article may be wrong. "To clarify, Google Reader remains a stand-alone product."

Well, at least this is assuming the first commenter "Louis Gray" is correct with his clarification....

Re:Google Apps

[whoop]

They also said yesterday or today that Apps support for Plus is coming real soon. So perhaps this will be it. I know we've been waiting for a very long time for our Apps accounts to become full Google accounts. Moving Reader would be far too foolish if the merge wasn't ready on day one.

Re:What the hell is Google Reader?

[RebrandSoftware]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=google+reader

Re:A cry for help?

[NoobixCube]

Summary is blatantly incorrect. Google Reader will still function standalone. This is about incorporating Google Reader into G+ for people who're already using it (So Google employees, Will Wheaton, Felicia Day, and me). What will change on Google Reader is it will lose whatever social bullshit it had before that I wasn't using anyway; which were actually added after Google Reader's inception in response to social hives of bickering and misinformation like Reddit. In other words, those who liked bickering over politics and science with their degrees and diplomas from Google U and Wikipedia Community College can still do that, over on Google+; those who just want to read their damn news can still do that, without Google+

Re:ummm...

[icebike]

Well for me its all bad. For one, i refuse to get a Google+ account, so if I'm forced to do this, I wont use reader anymore.

I'm of the Same opinion. I never used the social aspects of Google Reader anyway, but I use the Reader part all the time.
If that breaks, I'm off to any one of dozen other feed aggregators.

But the revised summary indicates Reader will stay around, and without that social layer on top it will actually serve its intended purpose better.

what

[macshit]

Google reader has social features?!

I use it daily—it's a great RSS reader, and being on the web makes it much handier than standalone apps—but I never even realized it had "social features"... hmm now that I think about it, I guess it does have "like" buttons and that sorta thing...

But if it does, switching to the Google+ equivalents seems a pretty reasonable move; duplicating this sort of functionality just seems silly. They should probably try to keep them optional though (using the reader without a G+ login would just disable the like buttons etc), to avoid pissing off all the Google+ haters.

Re:ummm...

[93 Escort Wagon]

Still trolling for Microsoft hey?

I know it's a fairly common ploy here on Slashdot - but replying to an intelligently written post with a mindless "you're a troll" or "you're a shill" response doesn't sway anyone towards your opinion.

Actually, I am not sure you put enough thought into this to even qualify as having an opinion.