Official Google Reader Blog - News, Tips and Tricks from the Reader team

Pick your friends!

8/13/2008 01:30:00 PM
Posted by Dolapo Falola, Software Engineer

Today we're excited to announce several improvements in the way sharing works in Reader. You've given us lots of feedback on the way our experimental sharing features work and we heard you loud and clear: you want more control over your sharing. We've been working hard to create a more flexible way to let you choose who to share with; you can now manage a Friends list within Reader, separate from your Gmail chat contacts.

To get started, you can choose to either continue sharing with all of your chat buddies or create a custom Friends list with those that you hand-select.

People that you add to the Friends list will be able to automatically see your shared items in Reader (remember, shared items always have a public URL).

We've also made it easy to manage who shares with you. When someone decides to share with you, you will get a notification and the ability to preview and subscribe to their shared items. At that time, you can also choose to share your items with them (or not).

We hope that this increases the flexibility and control you have over who you share with. We always love to hear your feedback as we continue to improve the sharing experience in Reader.