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October 06, 2006
Feed-a-feed is Google Reader's killer feature
There's so much good freeware and web-based software available these days that I rarely if ever actually buy software any more. In fact, I just recently realised that FeedDemon, the excellent feed reader written by Nick Bradbury, is the only software I've actually spent money on in a number of years.
So it's going to take something really good to drag me away from it. And that's exactly what Google Reader is doing. Lots of positive things have written about Google's radically improved feed reader but I've read little commentary on what is, for me, the real killer feature - 'feed-a-feed'.
When using FeedDemon the process of sharing a noteworthy news item entails a number of steps depending on whether you're going to email the link or tag it with a social bookmarking service (e.g., with del.icio.us you can tag an item into another user's 'inbox'). FeedDemon uses URL obfuscation for attention stats to you can't just copy the link address directly.
On the other hand, when using Google Reader I just add my friends and colleagues names as tags to the feed items of interest. Each tag, once shared, has a dedicated feed which those people can subscribe to in their own feed readers or grazers of choice. Google Reader even has an auto-complete function for tags so this method of sharing is as easy as it gets.
Technorati Tags: google reader, feed-a-feed, tagging
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Comments
Apart from some slowness, it is the first feedreader I've encountered that would cause me to leave Bloglines. I've been running it all week and I'm hugely impressed. Amazing considering how truly awful the first release was.
Posted by: Conor O'Neill | Oct 6, 2006 2:58:16 PM
2 things:
1) I'm not a fan of Google Reader (pre or post redesign) and I just don't like the whole "river of feeds" concept. I already have one over-crowded, never-ending "river" of information--it's called my inbox. Someone explain to me please why everyone seems to be in such a rush to make feed reading more like e-mail? I'll stick with netvibes, thank you.
2) The tags for your friends function is cool. It reminds me of the del.icio.us for: tag, but I expect it has the same annoying limitation: once you've pushed this link/post/etc. to the other person, any follow-up conversation about the item must take place out of the original context. i.e., I have to wait until later that day when I get home to say, "Hey, honey. Did you see that link I sent you?" and "Oh, yes. It was really interesting. blah, blah, blah".
Posted by: Jay Luker | Oct 6, 2006 6:56:15 PM
Forgot to say, "Hi, James"
Posted by: Jay Luker | Oct 6, 2006 6:57:37 PM
Hey Jay, good point about the lack of annotation ability, although I think its the right way for the software to work because all I want to do is feed-a-feed, ie. push a feed item of interest to my friends. I don't want to take time to comment or annotate it. If I did I'd use del.icio.us instead. So I really see them as two different tools that shouldn't try to copy functionality.
As regards the River of News thing I agree that's a matter of personal taste. I just find I'm getting through my subs more quickly in Google Reader than in feeddemon. Of course you don't have to use the River of News view - you can use an ordinary view too which is probably more what you're looking for?
Posted by: James Corbett | Oct 6, 2006 8:58:38 PM
