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My offer to Google Reader

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Re: My offer to Google Reader

#11

Post by seigenblues »

confusedreader wrote: post #5

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't really understand the huge community backlash to the Reader rework. I spend hours in reader every day, and it wasn't until they added in G+ that it actually became easy to share.The addition made it so I could share within a community I was already involved in rather then a few people in some disconnected Reader community. From my perspective they actually removed the useless…

I notice your account is ten minutes old. Is this an astroturf? A PR troll? ...Can you really tell me it got easier to share now that it's G+ and not Reader?

One man's "community [they were] already involved in" is another man's "disconnected community." Speak for yourself

I had a carefully cultivated list of cranks, miscreants, and technologic misanthropes who found some very interesting content and had some very interesting discussions, largely by way of the "note in reader" bookmarklet.

That whole community vanished for me overnight, without even a head nod for how to get it back, and I'm a bit upset about it. Publicly "+1"-ing something isn't even a first order approximation.

Re: My offer to Google Reader

#12

Post by Swizec »

For me the only problem with the new Reader is that too much space is wasted on the header thing and controls at the top. Before the redesign my articles would come up to almost the top of the browser window, now the top is uncomfortably low on my screen.

I love everything else from the redesign, it's cleaner and generally takes up less space but the design should be more about the content and less about Reader.

Re: My offer to Google Reader

#13

Post by west1737 »

I was pretty excited about Google moving sharing to Google+ as I like Google+ and I think making it easy to share will be crucial to success.

That being said, I hate the new Google Reader. I used it primarily as sharing tool, and the new sharing makes that more difficult. I think two fixes would make this better:

1) Being able to share easily with different circles. While I might be okay sharing publicly something interesting, there are plenty of less-than-appropriate funny articles that I only want to share with a few friends. This is one of the strengths of Google+, and it'd be great if Reader could take advantage of this.

2) Being able to see shared articles from other people. I understand they want to increase traffic to Google+, but this was always a great feature of Reader. In effect, each friend that used reader became their own feed. It'd be great to still have this feature and even though you're decreasing traffic to plus.google.com, you'd be increasing the overall use of Google+

Re: My offer to Google Reader

#14

Post by confusedreader »

rkudeshi wrote: post #8
confusedreader wrote: post #5

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't really understand the huge community backlash to the Reader rework. I spend hours in reader every day, and it wasn't until they added in G+ that it actually became easy to share.The addition made it so I could share within a community I was already involved in rather then a few people in some disconnected Reader community. From my perspective they actually removed the useless…

How big is your display? I'm on a 13" MBP (1280x800) and there's significantly less space allocated to reading now, which is my greatest frustration.

24in Monitor. I could see how it might not scale down well, maybe they need to introduce the UI scaling features that Gmail has that might help with a lot of peoples issues. The userscripts I tried basically just removed a lot of margins and padding around content, so maybe those might suit you on a small display?

Re: My offer to Google Reader

#16

Post by DiabloD3 »

confusedreader wrote: post #14
rkudeshi wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How big is your display? I'm on a 13" MBP (1280x800) and there's significantly less space allocated to reading now, which is my greatest frustration.

24in Monitor. I could see how it might not scale down well, maybe they need to introduce the UI scaling features that Gmail has that might help with a lot of peoples issues. The userscripts I tried basically just removed a lot of margins and padding around content, so maybe those might suit you on a small display?

The lack of padding is what makes it really bad. Its now entirely too cluttered. I quit using Google Reader, and I'm trying NewsBlur although its far from perfect, its a clear step up.

Re: My offer to Google Reader

#17

Post by siculars »

cavalcade wrote: post #7

Wow this is a bit naive and egotistical. I HATE the new google reader but to think that it takes ONE man outside of Google to fix their product is downright silly. The redesign was made in the context of Google's near-future plans to ignore that is ridiculous. A more constructive move is to provide a short checklist of things to re-consider or build/recommend a competing product. Its not like Google cant improve it m…

Do not underestimate the importance of just one single person. Examples abound.

Re: My offer to Google Reader

#18

Post by confusedreader »

seigenblues wrote: post #11
confusedreader wrote: post #5

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't really understand the huge community backlash to the Reader rework. I spend hours in reader every day, and it wasn't until they added in G+ that it actually became easy to share.The addition made it so I could share within a community I was already involved in rather then a few people in some disconnected Reader community. From my perspective they actually removed the useless…

I notice your account is ten minutes old. Is this an astroturf? A PR troll? ...Can you really tell me it got easier to share now that it's G+ and not Reader? One man's "community [they were] already involved in" is another man's "disconnected community." Speak for yourself I had a carefully cultivated list of cranks, miscreants, and technologic misanthropes who found some very interesting content and had some very in…

I generally only lurk and don't really comment unless there is something that really annoys me. Not a PR troll, just a Reader user that isn't picking up a pitchfork and joining the angry mobs over something I've wanted changed since G+ was released.

I can see how removing the social features upsets readers, but they mentioned them before they were going to do it and allow you to move your data out if it no longer suits you. To me, using the notes for commenting always felt off, really never felt like a real conversation. I like the ability to share something to my specific circles and then discuss it there, you don't have to only click that little +1 button under the post if you don't want it public.

This seems to be the way that Google works on things. Huge changes, then iterate until it is usable again. They knew they were going to burn users, in this case very loyal users, to make a better product that aligns with their overall goals. I assume they will bring better social integration in the future, though when that will be, who knows.

Re: My offer to Google Reader

#19

Post by rkudeshi »

confusedreader wrote: post #14
rkudeshi wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How big is your display? I'm on a 13" MBP (1280x800) and there's significantly less space allocated to reading now, which is my greatest frustration.

24in Monitor. I could see how it might not scale down well, maybe they need to introduce the UI scaling features that Gmail has that might help with a lot of peoples issues. The userscripts I tried basically just removed a lot of margins and padding around content, so maybe those might suit you on a small display?

If I remember correctly, Google engineers are given the choice of one 30" monitor or a two 24" monitors, which is what the new Google Reader was presumably built on and perhaps optimized for.

However, given the fact that laptops dominate computer sales nowadays, I'm downright amazed they didn't test it further on small screens.

Re: My offer to Google Reader

#20

Post by gojomo »

magicalist wrote: post #4

I'm a long time, heavy user of Reader, but as a disclaimer: my usage consists of the letters j, k, m, and v, so I'll admit that I don't care at all about the lost social features, and my short cuts and usage patterns remain unchanged. This article seems no different than any other of the reader articles submitted in the last few days (especially the one by the other former googler that worked on reader). If his offer…

His offer is serious because he used to work on Google Reader.
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