Web 2.0: Jason Shellen demonstrates the Google Reader

Google Reader is a web-based  RSS aggregator, with lots of Ajax UI components, offering integrated access to BlogSearch. I have uploaded my OPML file, and it is apparently busy loading up my 220+ feeds (they have not shown yet).

I have uploaded my feed manually in order to check out the interface. Cute. I like the fact that you can navigate posts through keyboard commands.

Using the Search functionality, you can get a list of feeds/posts that you can subscribe to -  optionally adding labels (= tags, a term they want to get rid of). These "labels" actually allow you to categorize your feeds. I'll ask Jason whether these are personal or they can be shared, like Rojo's Jason confirmed to me that they were personal, but they were thinking about the shared model.

Like Bloglines, the display of pictures does not respect placement statements (I always put mine on the right side of posts, and they appear on the left).

Interestingly items can be displayed by date, or relevance. Not sure what the latter means. The relevance is based on an analysis of your blogroll, and surfaces posts that relate to your areas of interest (this is reportedly work in progress).

Will add more thoughts once my feeds have been uploaded. Still nothing after 30 minutes.

Bye bye Bloglines ? Not exactly yet, since customary speed of Google mainstream products is not there yet, but scaling is something that these guys do well. But Bloglines has had its issues very recently.

Mark Fletcher is on another panel and shares that Bloglines has doubled its user base in six months, and tripled the number of blogs covered, sucking in 2.8M posts yesterday. He explains that the architecture they had originally built did not scale to these kinds of numbers, and sort of hints that they are re-architecting - which explains why no new functionality has been seen for a while now.

Congrats to Jason and team (but please, get me my feeds).

More:

•    Official announcement from the Google blog: Feed the world

Tag: web2con