I use Reader almost daily. I use G+ almost daily. I use Buzz almost daily as well, but that's another discussion entirely.
The new integration between Reader and G+ was judged and has been found lacking.
Google Reader was an amazing piece of social technology without even knowing it. The social features in Reader created individual feeds from each of my friends that could be read, in a block, like the rest of the feeds I followed. The feeds my friends share were filled with interesting, off-beat articles; nerdy internet memes; foodie recipes; tech, science, and political news that I might have otherwise missed in my Reader filled with crafty, design-oriented, cycling feeds. My friends' feeds were the first thing I read any time I signed into Reader.
Of course,
Reader had its faults... the commenting feature on each post was fine,
except there was no way to set it to notify you when someone commented,
or responded to one of your comments (Sharing posts to Buzz remedied
this but, again, we're not talking about Google's soon-to-be-retired,
just the already dead). I'd also love to see a 'Sort- Oldest Unread
Item First' functionality, but I'm really nit-picking now.
G+ just throws everything into a single stream, with no way
to parse out what people were sharing from Reader which, in most cases,
has a different quality and character from what they just throw into
their stream for a quick 'look at this!'. The 'integrated' sharing in G+ also requires you to not only publicly +1
something before actually sharing it (so much for G+ allowing you to
control your information), but then decide with whom you want to share it. Gone are the days of 1-click Reader sharing...
More importantly though all the articles are shared rather than reciprocally followed- making a huge difference in the dynamic flow of information. Before, I choose whose information I consumed indicating my interest, but now, no matter how interested I am in their shares, I feel like everyone's standing on their individual soap boxes yelling over one another.
So now, not only do I feel like I'm spamming my friends' G+ stream with articles, but there is no way to ensure that I'm reading all the articles shared by my friends that were previously, and so conviently, listed as 'unread'. Even after just a few hours posts end up buried under one another, requiring unnecessary scrolling (assuming you were preciously using headline view). And while G+'s habit of rearranging conversations by most recent comment works great for Facebook style posts, it causes what might be otherwise interesting articles to disappear to the abyss of my G+ stream. While that might be fine for people in the G+ ghost towns, it creates a lot of frustration when you have an active group of people participating in the service.
On top of all of that, the new reader integration doesn't allow me to read anything in G+. I need to go to the original website, which only serves to take me away from Google's properties more often. So now, to read any single individual's posts I would have to go to each profile individually- if I can remember everyone who I was previously following- click through each share individually and leave G+ to read each article. Some of my friends are habitual 15+ shares-a-day posters, so, quite frankly, this new system sucks.
I'm disappointed that they gutted an amazing social service in an
attempt to bolster a relatively stagnant one- and, more importantly-
they did it in the most ham-handed way possible. I'm also disappointed that
Google made changes without taking into account the essence of the
services they were revamping. Reader's purpose is to create a
repository for information I'm interested in, things I'm seeking out.
Previously I sought out the people whose feeds I found interesting. G+
is for social updates that I wanted to share with others, lighter, community and relational
information. If I wanted Facebook-style sharing for articles in Reader,
I'd be using Facebook.
Like I said- if it wasn't abundantly clear- I am really disappointed in the
changes, and I hope (though I don't hold out much) that Google might
come to their senses and reverse the changes until better integration
can be devised.
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