Sharing is Friendship

I read that line somewhere recently and it kind of made me laugh. It's always funny how marketing people like to take actions and turn them into buzzwords for the purposes of influencing our purchasing habits.

This post isn't about that...

I recently wrote about the Google Reader, which is an RSS reader built right into your browser. I've been using it religiously for the past two weeks and am hooked. The interface is intuitive, the updates are quick and the recent upgrades they've made have solidified this product into my browsing habits.

What we're finding with the overload of information is that the need for a filter becomes ever expansive and critical. The best filter is, of course, your own tastes. But in the absense of (or in addition to) having the time to define your tastes and browse or search for things which match your taste, you turn towards trusted friends and experts to help guide your own information journey.

Google Reader has enabled a simple but powerful feature which accomplishes just this.



At the bottom of each post is a "Share" icon which, when clicked, will add the post to your own personal feed of public posts.

Mine appear here: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/03153255841072623261
(wierd URL, I know. But likely necessary for security reason)

What this creates is, essentially, an aggregate blog of MY preferred posts. Being Google, they've also allowed you to take the snippet,badge,widget of that page and put it into your own blog, as I've done on the sidebar.

Enabling quick and easy sharing of information is a powerful concept which we'll be seeing a lot more lately...once again, now we just need something of quality to share.