The new "x people like this" widget is really irritating. One of the nice things about Google Reader (and most Google apps) is the subdued interface. So why add these random screamers that give me absolutely no useful information? I really couldn't care less how many people liked this article. If they really must give me this information, keep it consistent with the rest of the UI, not popping out in an eye-catching colour.
Especially since it's global across Google Reader. I couldn't care less that some random person in Florida that uses reader liked an article that ended up in my rss feed. I wish I could turn it off.
You can turn it off. I spend a lot of time in Google Reader, so efficiency and lack of distractions is very important to me. I turn off widgets that I don't use in most of the sites that I frequent.
The way you can turn it off it to install the Stylish extension for Firefox (which allows user specified style sheets on a per-site basis), use Firebug to find the div id or class of the widget you don't like, and set it to "display: none !important".
Stylish is similar to greasemonkey, which means that you can usually find someone who's already done what you're looking for, and shared it. Here is my stylesheet to make Google reader minimalistic: http://userstyles.org/styles/12663 and here is what it looks like when installed: http://bit.ly/minimalreader You can temporarily disable it with a single click when you want to use any of the hidden widgets.
Thanks but that only works on Firefox and I generally prefer to use Chrome since it's so much faster. (The difference is even more striking in Linux than it is in Windows.)
While you can hide the number of likes using other scripts, I did want to see the number. So I moved it to the most logical place. Right next to the “Like link”
When I noticed it I found the number to be the most annoying thing about it. It shows a stark contrast between what is popular and what isn't, and I don't care for that at all. I read feeds because I have found the authors to have consistently high quality content, not because its popular. When I want that, I go hit up a social news site.
At the very least, they should be limiting it to only people on your contact lists. I couldn't care less how many random Google users liked the same thing I did. If, on the other hand, I could see that people I know liked it, maybe I would want to discuss it with them.
I love Google reader, but this new "feature" is the first time I'm thinking about looking elsewhere. It's so irrelevant which people "like" something I'm reading, I just can't fathom how they could think it's a good idea to shove that information in my face. The thing that amazes me is that there are so many other ideas they could be pursuing with Reader that play to their strengths. For example: lots of my RSS feeds talk about the same thing. A link gets put up here on Hacker News, but then it also gets discussed on Slashdot, Wired, etc... Google is good at automated content analysis. Why not experiment with ways to combine and merge feeds based on the content so I can read everything about a single topic in one spot? That would be truly useful and something you can't get anywhere else.
In some sense, I feel like these new features are a bit lazy on their part. They're sort of avoiding doing anything innovative or novel and instead are just jumping on the social networking bandwagon to give the illusion of progress.
I all against those social features introduced in GR.
In my opnion they should focus on core functionalities missing (such as feed filters), their social features are way beyond what you can find elsewhere to share content (Friendfeed, Facebook...).
The "like" feature is plain terrible, the smiley face is distracting me from the content of the feed because it's on top and bright yellow. It was an awful idea to put it there.
I wouldn't mind if there was a way to turn the new features off. But the typical Google fashion of introducing features is to initially force them on people, then give an option to turn them off several months later after people have been constantly complaining (like SearchWiki).
The guy on this article insists that any user must use all of the available sharing option (like, share, share with note, email and comment) and that is, obviously, not the point.
The idea is to allow user to share whatever they want using the way they want to.
* For people who don't use reader: email it;
* For articles no one has shared: share with note and express your thoughts;
* For items already shared: share and input a comment with your thoughts;
* For things you like but don't have much of an opinion: like it.
It's naïve to blame Google for trying to make one of its services more social, as this is the way people want it. I'm glad they implemented all those sharing features. Now I have access to lots of interesting news, and can also share them easily without all the "emailing" hassle.
I'm not really sure why you would want to share what you're reading etc. I certainly don't care what my friends are reading, why would I expect them to care what I'm reading.
A setting to turn off all the social features would be lovely!
I like the sharing items stuff (as long as your friends don't share like, a dozen items every day) and starring something for later is just an extension of the GMail capacity.
I hate the new feature to the core. I don't really care if someone down in new mexico likes what I'm currently reading. Plus, why do they feel like promoting the new feature straight in your face (it's just downright annoying). and to add salt to the wound, i've actually spent a few minutes googling how to disable it (apparently there's no way you can disable it, easily, yet). so I'm actually glad people seem to hate it.
i haven't read the article or checked my google reader, but I have always thought that the thing RSS was missing was social capabilities. this is why sites like yc are such a big hit, there is a need for this on the internet. RSS + voting for stories is great as far as i'm concerned, just give people the ability to turn it off if they don't like it.
I switched from bloglines to google reader two years ago, greader evolved in the wrong direction imho, I was expecting a gmail like experience but every new update adds nothing to usability... is there something new to try that let's me really focus on my feeds?
