Mister Bleigh

So now you can share Google Reader items with GTalk friends and it’s really seamless and easy to do. Of course, the obligatory backlash happened and whatnot. Ok. But ultimately, this new feature of Google Reader has some interesting ramifications.

When your friends share something with you, you can then click the share button again, which will share it with your other friends, who can then…you get the idea. What does this remind you of? That’s right, the Share button is Web 2.0’s response to the joke email forwarder! While I say that in jest, it really does provide some enormous viral potential for content (assuming you have friends who like the same things you do, and so forth). I don’t think it’s had much of an impact yet, but I think that as usage of this feature spreads, there will be a general gain in the collective knowledge of a number of groups. Everyone follows different blogs but the good stuff from all of everyone’s blogs is now available to everyone.

The other thing that is interesting to me is a question of ethics: do I share my own blog posts or not? This feels very much like the “should I vote for myself” idea, and it’s hard to decide where to come down. On the one hand, of course I think everything I write about is very interesting. I wrote about it, after all. On the other hand, it feels like such self-promotion that I’ve yet to be able to pull the trigger. Maybe if I did my Feedburner stats would improve somewhat. Probably not.