Google Reader and a barrage of updates

My friends say I am an internet addict, but I would like to call myself a Google reader addict. Though I spend a lot of time on twitter, friendfeed and yes in the bathroom taking long baths, reader is what keeps me occupied through the day.

So in the past two days I started noticing a barrage of updates in the service which will make your life much easier. Of course most of these ideas have been adopted from sites like twitter, friendfeed and tumblr.

Search and follow

Earlier to read someone’s shared items, you had to know that person’s email id or subscribe to the RSS feed of his shared items. But then those feed would be displayed under “subscriptions” and not under “People you follow”. Well now that has been done away with. You can search for people by their name of email id and follow them, just like you would in twitter. Sweet =)

Thoughts to share

After adding a few new followers, if you head to “People you follow” section you will be greeted by a “Have some thoughts to share” window which reminded me of twitter and friendfeed. If you want to see updates you make through this window you need to check your notes under “all items”.

I like it

In Tumblr I could “heart” posts, in Friendfeed I could like it, in twitter I could star it. Facebook liked “like” and added that feature to their site, however there was no way to go through all the ‘likes’. Google Reader always had a starring option to favourite interesting feeds, so the addition of a “like” button at the bottom of feed entries puzzled me. Of course, everyone who can view your shared item can see that you liked it, but isn’t that the reason you shared it in the first place? A rating system for shared items would have been a better alternative

Customised it yet?

I am not sure if this is a new update, but I never found this feature before. You can now even give a custom URL for your shared items. You can find mine here. If you want one, head here for how-to.

Overall I am liking the new reader, apart from the like feature which doesn’t make sense to me. Of course, feel free to correct me if you think I am wrong, or missed a point.