Google Reader a Stealth Digg Killer?
Steve Mermelstein wisely states that Google Reader could be a digg killer. The catch is a) people need to be using Google's sharing features and b) they would need to add a feature that displays how many people have shared each post. It occurs to me the same could be said for Google displacing del.icio.us.
I don't see this happening anytime soon, but as Google becomes more integrated in our lives the possibility looks more real. By the way if you want to search your Google Reader feeds you can do so easily using Google Co-op. Handy hack.
Tags: googlereader, google, digg, del.icio.us,
I dont get it. Why does Google Reader, built by a company that dedicates 70% of its resources to search, need a hack to search through all of your feeds. Is this a hard feature to implement? Can someone clue me in. I would think a simple code would be all that would be needed. Just curious.
Stan
IdeaThunderdome
Posted by: Stan Hansen | Tuesday, December 26, 2006 at 07:31 PM
Totally agree. They have a habit of adding search later on. Google Spreadsheet didn't get one until Google Docs was born.
Posted by: Steve Rubel | Tuesday, December 26, 2006 at 08:10 PM
The other obvious catch is that of course, people will need to be using Google Reader as their news aggregator.
Which means that before Google Reader could displace Digg, it would have to displace the likes of Bloglines, NetVibes, NewsGator, Rojo and the hundreds of news aggregators out there. And to think that Google could dominate the news aggregator space doesn't sound like msic to my ears, to tell you the truth.
Digg is one site, but news aggregator services is a very wide space/market - and hopefully it can continue being that, rather than yet another pseudo-monopoly in the hands of a GYM co.
Posted by: RBA | Tuesday, December 26, 2006 at 08:37 PM
RBA, good point. But what if there was a standard sharing tag that all the readers adopted. Think about how powerful that would be!
Posted by: Steve Rubel | Tuesday, December 26, 2006 at 08:43 PM
It seems to me that it is easy to game the system if you only rank the popular ones first... Well, hmm...
Posted by: Haochi | Tuesday, December 26, 2006 at 09:05 PM
Google Reader can't compete with Digg or del.icio.us because it's not a bookmarking service or a social news site.
Even with the modifications you described above, you'd only be able to "tag" blog posts, and only those that belonged to blogs you subscribed to. A better bet would be to add features to Google News to make it more Digg-like, and build up Google Bookmarks to compete with del.icio.us.
Google Reader is an incredible RSS aggregator, but it is still just an RSS aggregator.
Posted by: ImJasonH | Wednesday, December 27, 2006 at 01:22 AM
ImJasonH: I think you are totally missing that Google Reader IS a bookmarking service. Just check out what I've "bookmarked" for you on my LinkBlog: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/14480565058256660224
I don't know of a way to do this with any other news aggregator/service.
Posted by: Robert Scoble | Wednesday, December 27, 2006 at 06:37 AM
"they would need to add a feature that displays how many people have shared each post."
nope, it could just affect pagerank. ;)
Posted by: toivo | Wednesday, December 27, 2006 at 08:16 AM
Someone should develop a bookmarklet that lets us add non-feed items to Google Reader shared pages.
Posted by: Steve Rubel | Wednesday, December 27, 2006 at 09:11 AM
The primary benefit that Google Reader offers is that it is part of Google's set of applications and is increasingly getting integrated into other services (for example, Google Personalized Home Page). The advantage for the user is that they don't have to create logins all over the place. They could have a one-stop place to search and share all information they create or read. At some time, I think Google Reader may be get integrated into Gmail so that you don't need 2 programs to read your email and your feeds. And finally, the new Google Reader interface (with its shortcut keys) is very user-friendly.
Posted by: Krishna Kumar | Wednesday, December 27, 2006 at 10:01 AM
This is right up Google's alley, think about it, what's their revenue stream? AdSense. Who uses AdSense? Bloggers. Heck, Google just BOUGHT Blogger and integrated AdSense into it. Also the shared items and starred items always seemed, nice...but not great...this would make them great.
Posted by: Michael.NET | Wednesday, December 27, 2006 at 10:01 AM
"Someone should develop a bookmarklet that lets us add non-feed items to Google Reader shared pages."
I've wished for that before, but never mentioned it to the Reader team. Guess I'll have to send this to them. :)
Posted by: Matt Cutts | Wednesday, December 27, 2006 at 11:00 AM
Robert: I know you can share blog posts (I subscribe to your link blog as a matter of fact), but that's just it -- you can *only* share blog posts. There are plenty of sites on Digg and del.icio.us that aren't blog posts.
As Steve pointed out, you'd need some kind of way to tag/share non-blog items in order for Google Reader to become a Digg killer.
My point was, it would be easier to turn Google News into a Digg killer than to turn Google Reader into one. And as far as del.icio.us competitors, Google Bookmarks is already there, it just needs the sharing and usability features.
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