How to Share Items in Google Reader and Still Keep Them Private

There's been an uproar in the blogosphere and elsewhere this week over who - by default - can see your Google Reader Shared Items (a new feature). The short answer is anyone you have chatted with over Google Talk.

If this spooks you out there are two widely reported workarounds: a) don't share any items or b) make sure you hide anyone that you don't want to share with. However, there is a third undocumented trick that lets you share items with a private group and no one else. I plan to expand on this with a post later this week about how I am now using Google Reader as a Personal Knowledge Management System to complement my Gmail Personal Nerve Center.

The key is to make use of Google's underutilized tagging feature. At the bottom of any item in your reader you will spot a small link that says "tags." This system overlaps with, yet complements Google Reader folders. Click on the field to create a new tag. To illustrate for this blog post, here I have added the tag "myteam" to a cool post by Paul Stamatiou (which borrows one of my favorite photos of all time).

Next, click on "Settings" at the the top of the Reader interface, then click on Tags. Find the tag you just created and make that tag - and only that tag - public.

Finally, and this is key, share the tag page only with people you trust. They can subscribe to this tag page in Google Reader. Further, this page will not be spidered by any of search engines. What's more, even if someone should find your private Google Reader number (which shared items does expose when you hover over profiles), no one will be able to find this page unless they know the secret tag name.

It would be great if Google would tell people this so I wouldn't have to (and simplified the whole process). Right now, they make it too hard to find. Still, there is a workaround that lets you have your cake and eat it too. UPDATE :: The psychic gang at Google posted this just as I wrote this post.