With all the news lately about Facebook purchasing Friendfeed last week and everyone saying they were going to go to Google Reader I thought I would move some stuff. For the last week we have been hearing “Friendfeed is dead” to a point that it is ridiculous. The truth is that Friendfeed is NOT dead and continues to grow. This has coincided with the recent update to Google Reader. Many people on Friendfeed are whining about Facebook owning them and saying they are going over to Google Reader. For this reason I have decided to give them another try. My experience with Google Reader is that it seems too busy without a smooth flow. Maybe if I just spend some time in there I will eventually figure it out. People have told me that Google Reader auto updates just like Friendfeed but so far I have not been able to get that function to work. If I am doing something wrong, someone speak up and tell me.
Everyone is telling me that Google Reader is more social now but the only social that I can find is in the settings it allows you to select which social sites you want your posts to go to. Then on the bottom of each post it has a “send to” link where you can send that particular post to one of the social sites. My Google account is paul.mccord and so if anyone can connect to me and give me a tour, I would appreciate it. I am sure it has some nice functions but I have not had much time to play around with it that much. As I do get some time, I will post back here about my findings.
Google Reader is going to have to be pretty good to “out do” Friendfeed. I just love the way I can leave Friendfeed on the screen and things just automatically scroll across the screen. I can be watching TV and see the stories scroll in real time. This real time scroll is hard to beat. This is one of the things that I am really looking forward to with the new Google Wave coming up in a couple months. I watched the hour and 20 minute demo video that is on their site and it looks pretty cool. As I said before, I will spend some time with Google Reader and give them a fair chance and maybe I will grow to like them. About half or so of my Friendfeed user contacts also use Google Reader.