GoogleReader Challenges Others like FriendFeed

By Eric Brown May 7, 2008

Google has released an addition to their RSS aggregator, Google Reader. The addition, “Note in Reader”, acts like a bookmarking tool that is then transferred to your shared items in Google Reader. Unfortunately for Google, this has been done (with incredible success) by other companies already. Can Google compete?

Google announced yesterday that they had made an addition to their GoogleReader. The feed aggregator now has bookmarking capabilities that enable you to share your “notes” due to the addition of the “Note in Reader” function.

Note in Reader Features

The “Note in Reader” function is super easy to use. All you do is place a link in your bookmarks or in the toolbar. The link will bring up this form: Click Here to see it work!

With the “Add to shared items” selected, anything posted will automatically be shared with your friends and family. Pretty simple…

FriendFeed Beat Google to the Punch

A feature like this is nothing new. Other companies have been actively pursuing applications or services just like this. The idea seems to stem from a combination of social bookmarking and microblogging, where you can bookmark things you are doing, finding and engaging in, and then share them with others. You can also see what the friends of others are checking out. And most of these operate with ease, facilitating easy functioning.

The main concern here is the fact that other “services” such as FriendFeed have been doing this already and they have been doing it for some time. FriendFeed has seen tremendous growth that coincides with the recent explosions of social bookmarking, social networking and other forms of social interaction on the web.

Since starting in the fall 2007, FriendFeed has received exposure from top marketing guru’s, wide-spread word of mouth and the good old socialness of the web. Google is six months or more behind them. And there are other, smaller, lesser known services that are similar.

What Others Think

We at CMSWire aren’t the only ones wondering how this new feature will stand up against the established. Commenters from around the web have expressed similar views and concerns about Google's late entry in this social field.

Comments like, “[…] has GoogleReader lost to FriendFeed already? Tons of early adopters have certainly moved their reading behavior over to FriendFeed,” and, “Seems like a challenge to del.icio.us too,” have been cropping up over the last two days.

Despite the fact that Google seems a little late on the upswing here, this illustrates how they are working to get involved in all aspects of the web.

Some are going as far to say it is, “a step towards a universal web annotation tool.” It does certainly show that Google is stepping up the bar for their real competition (Microsoft right now).

The more Google gets their hands in, the more they move toward total web integration. It should be interesting to see over the rest of this year just what Google does to build its empire into a single source for everything web and web 2.0.