Written on September 12th, 2007 at 09:09 pm by Darren Rowse
Leaked Video Reveals Google Reader Developments
A leaked video from Google on Google Reader reveals some fascinating hints at where the reader is headed according to Blog Scoped. Some of the highlights:
- Google will work on a standard for feed publishers to tell aggegrators about changes in the feed
- The Reader team is going to integrate more social features
- Google is interested in allowing users to comment on items they share
- Very soon, Reader will recommend feeds to the user, based on previous subscriptions and other Google activity.
- Reader might be more directly monetized in the future, but Google wants to watch out showing ads next to other people’s content. This is a problem with Google News too. They might do something like they did with the non-free Opera: show the content owners’ ads in the interface when they’re AdSense publishers.
There’s heaps more - but the above interested me most. I think that the idea that they’d allow publishers who show AdSense to have their ads show in the feed is an interesting possibility that might help publishers monetize their feeds.
Also that they’ll be recommending feeds to readers is something that I think will advantage some bloggers - the question will be - how does one get on the list of recommended feeds? What sort of algorithm will determine who gets recommended? I know that some of the very biggest blogs with massive feed subscriber numbers have really benefited from being a default feed in feed readers - so this could really launch some lucky blogs!
14 Responses to “Leaked Video Reveals Google Reader Developments”
Matt Jones
September 12th, 2007 10:37 pm
Wow those features sound great… I guess getting on the recommended list will result in a case of the ‘rich getting richer’… but how ‘rich’ you have to be in the first place will be what I want to hear…
vangardx
September 12th, 2007 10:41 pm
i interested to know more how they list the recommended feed :) maybe you can write about this next time darren
Dan Cole
September 12th, 2007 10:41 pm
That’s going to be cool. At times, I have a hard time finding blogs I like, a list from Google about what ones fit me best would be cool.
Kiltak
September 12th, 2007 10:41 pm
Yeah right, leaked…
I’m fairly sure that most of the time, “leaked content” is only a clever mean of building hype around a project..
Everyone does it, so why not google?
Deron Sizemore
September 12th, 2007 10:45 pm
Wow, that’s awesome! Sounds like some great features. I’m a huge fan of Google Reader, so anything like this is great for me.
Badsra
September 12th, 2007 11:06 pm
Letting people comment on someone’s shared items might not be the best of ideas. After all, a blogger will benefit most if the readers leave comments at the original owner’s blog.
Taking ProBlogger as an example, if people leave comments on Scoble’s shared items (for ProBlogger posts), there’s a lesser chance for the blogger to gain feedback from the readers. Of course, not all blogs work this way but I’d rather have at my blog the comments that are directed to my posts.
BTW, I wrote more on this in a post on the same topic.
Lindsay (the sailboat guy)
September 12th, 2007 11:54 pm
This reads to me as:
This business is stepping towards a more disciplined approach and is about to get VERY serious.
It sounds similar to the auditing processes print publishers were forced to subject themselves to several years ago.
This is to be expected, if the blogging industry wants to continue to attract the serious advertising budgets from the “big end of town”.
Google is as much a pawn in this process as us mere mortals, in that, if they wish to maintain their dominant market position and cash flow, they have to prove that real peoples purchasing decisions can be influenced using their resources.
Maybe (big hope) it will help side line the cowboys creating non commercial swarms of “Get Rich Quick” inducing traffic.
Nick's Marketing Tips
September 13th, 2007 12:11 am
I really think the ‘leak’ was done on purpose.
I really like the idea of recommending feeds to readers based on what they have read before. Kind of like Amazon’s “Customer who looked at this also looked x”. It’s not perfect but sometimes it’s works well.
Jamaipanese
September 13th, 2007 12:13 am
interesting
Google Reader is the only online reader I know, never had a reason to try another reader
Wallace
September 13th, 2007 12:51 am
You are right, the recommending feeds will only benefit some giant weblogs only.
WarriorBlog
September 13th, 2007 12:57 am
That would be awesome. I will enjoy some of the features above since I use Google Reader myself :-)
andreio
September 13th, 2007 11:21 pm
That’s great news … I love that Google moves fast. Some of these features were to be expected since Google bought Feedburner.
Alex Shalman
September 14th, 2007 1:09 am
Hmm… so google is going to monetize google reader for their own benefit? Why does this not strike me as a “good” update?
The other features seem interesting.
libby
September 14th, 2007 11:52 am
good article
http://web.enjoychn.com/blog/1730-leaked-video-reveals-google-reader-developments
Leave a Reply