Google Reader's founder on Google Reader | Hacker News Reader

Google Reader's founder on Google Reader

plus.google.com

47 pointsteaspoon16 comments

From the article, I liked this view:

    The value of a social network seems to map 
    proportionally to the perceived value of its 
    main object. (Examples: sharing best-of-web links on
    Metafilter or sharing hi-res photos on Flickr or
    sharing video art on Vimeo or sharing statuses on
    Twitter/Facebook or sharing questions on Quora.) 
    If you want a community with stronger ties, 
    provide more definition to your social object.

And I think this is exactly the problem Google+ faces. Nobody knows exactly what it is, unless viewed in the light of Facebook. Basically Google is starting to behave like Microsoft, slapping the Windows and .NET keywords on every product.

What I don't like about the new Reader interface is that compared to the old interface it makes it hard for me to actually read. It uses tons of whitespace, not enough contrast and for example the fact that the article is not separated from the left menu with a visible line is freaking annoying. My eyes move from left to right and then carriage return when reading and the lack of a visible line makes it hard for my eyes to stop before reaching the menu, on every single line. And in comparison with the new GMail design, Reader does not have a "Compact Display Density" option, which makes it seem like a half-baked attempt to me.

However, it is still my RSS reader because the alternatives suck. Just as Flickr is still my photo archival and sharing service because the alternatives suck.

And this brings me to another point: I'm sad that Flickr is stagnating, but on the other hand I'm glad that it is because a company can fuck up its products really badly. And I also wish Google wouldn't have touched Reader, or GMail for that mater. I like Google+, but I don't get why they have to have a unified design. GMail is GMail, Reader is Reader, Google+ is Google+, Picasa is Picasa. And sure, make sharing work between them, but pretending that everything is one big unified product will bring everything down to a common denominator, taking away value. And OMG, how Google can suck at design.

Also, do note that the next product to receive upgrades will be Picasa. And I'm pretty sure they'll fuck with this one too. That's because in the context of sharing on Google+, archiving GBs of your personal photos is no longer an important use-case.

They already broke Picasa sharing with the utterly confusing "plus or email" choice that makes no sense: you can email share (picasa style) or you can plus share with an email address (which silently fails if the recipient is an alien creature who doesn't have a gmail account)

Why would Google bother redesigning a product they're planning on deprecating? It seems fairly obvious to me that this simple math is currently in play at Google: Social is important, G+ is a pan-Google social product, and social products live or die by network effect, therefore all effort shall be directed toward driving up the userbase of G+. Hence the black bar. Hence shutting down Buzz. Hence the + operator in search. And hence the obvious integration of Reader.

To drive away the core audience, before they shut down the service. Less noise that way.

Are you serious? You're really suggesting that they put resources into redesiging a product to integrate with a new product in a cynical maneuver to drive away the current userbase so that when they shut it down later, there will be less complaining about it?

I am half serious. I think that the investment in Reader is just investment in Google+. So, in away they are no longer investing in it. It may not be an active thought, but they are driving away the core audience.

When there traffic starts to dip, and they decide to cut google reader completely. There will be no one left who cares. They will think that no one cared in the first place. They will have forgotten when the destroyed reader for a large number of people.

That's a much more reasonable position. But I think it's wrong.

Reader is a natural complement to Plus. It's a huge source of link-sharing, which is probably why they wanted to integrate it, so all of that link traffic would populate their new social product.

I think we're at the early stage of Google's now fairly routine product release cycle: half-baked. They will quickly iterate, taking user feedback into account, until the product is awesome. I point to Gmail's recent redesign as evidence.

I also think that publicly subscribable[0] circles have to be coming soon. I think there's a lot of private sharing that's happening now that doesn't necessarily need to be. Right now private sharing is conflated with directed sharing. With public, but directed sharing, though, you can publicly mine the data, and also use the usage numbers for marketing purposes.

Honestly, I'm still holding out hope that Reader will eventually be a full-fledged alternative interface for Plus.

[0]: http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/12261287667/in-defense-of-the...

Reader used to be a great way to link share, not it is largely only unidirectional (sharing out to google+).

Perhaps the google '+1' extension is going to be the way they drive that same information into the google+ ecosystem.

Reader being a "full-fledged alternative interface for Plus" is really the only sane decision at this point. One that would excite me. (I already use fb-rss for reader-Facebook integration.) I hope that's the decision that they made, but I'm not too optimistic at this point.

I personally think it would have been smarter to integrate google plus with reader more (even if that involves forking reader) before changing the product and removing sharing.

Now we are stuck with an unusable product for an indeterminate amount of time. Due to Google's notoriously poor communication, most won't wait and the community will move elsewhere.

It seems like a waste to me and I seriously doubt they had the foresight to predict this level of backlash.

I guess we will have to wait an see.

"saying “no” to projects doesn’t make you Steve Jobs if you say no to inspiring things. It’s the discernment that’s meaningful, not the refusal. Anyone can point their thumb to the ground."

I am sorry I just had to quote this.

There have been 3 or 4 links about this, each with its own set of comments.

It would be nice if various submitted links on the same topic could be grouped together, with a shared comment space. Otherwise, each time a new link of relevance to a preexisting topic comes up, there's a separate page for it, with a separate set of comments.

They removed a tiny feature of search in Google Reader that I absolutely loved. It has nothing to do with Google+, so I don't now why it's gone. Here it is:

Keyboard search ability: Before, I could just type "Camera" in the search text box, and then I hit tab and I can type and auto complete "Kijiji" (my RSS feed). You now have to hit tab, then click the drop down list with your mouse and scroll down through all your feeds.

If you tried to type 'K', as in the first letter of Kijiji, you actually were using the keyboard shortcuts of 'j' and 'k' which moves you up and down of the current items in the loaded feed.

Ugh. Details, details, details! If Google seems to not care about such detail, who knows what else they are overlooking.

This is a great quote:

"The value of a social network seems to map proportionally to the perceived value of its main object. (Examples: sharing best-of-web links on Metafilter or sharing hi-res photos on Flickr or sharing video art on Vimeo or sharing statuses on Twitter/Facebook or sharing questions on Quora.) If you want a community with stronger ties, provide more definition to your social object."

Something we've been struggling with is doing something too narrow vs. lacking definition of a social object. Good insight.

I am excited to see all the new feed readers. I think newsblur, or hivemined are in the best positon right now to absorb the google reader audience.

I like its look, but I wish newsblur didn't require a username or would just let me use my e-mail address. I failed the "new character" test. Once three or four don't work, I really want you to just offer me one. Or not require one in the first place.

I built what Hivemind is aiming to do about 3 years ago and eventually lost out to GR and shut it down.

But, now I've turned it back on. You might like it. Please send feedback!

http://feedeachother.com (still working out a few kinks, so be gentle)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com