Ehsan Nourbakhsh’s Blog

Nice view Thank goodness I don’t have exams anymore.

Almost a month ago Google changed its Google Reader product by removing one of its core features: social sharing. This feature allowed you to share items you had read in Reader with your ‘friends’ in Reader community. You could also follow them, comment on their items and so on. Since your comments and notes were only text, the communities were formed around type of ideas they embraced rather than looks. Furthermore, your semi-anonymous Reader identity made the concentration on context more emphasized. In my personal opinion, the resulting network enjoyed a much more intellectual atmosphere than other more sophisticated social networks do.

In order to promote their main socail network, Google Plus, they eliminiated Reader’s features with no provision of seemless migration. I can see this as an engineer’s assumption that new “toys” automatically attract new people. Marketing people might disagree, pointing to brand loyalty.
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