Sharing Curated Content

Following up on last night’s post:

I’ve come up with a solution to my Reader-share problem, at least for now. I use Diigo for lots of bookmarking purposes (my [out-of-date] sidebar “Rillabooks” log, for example) and have set up a “share” tag there that will feed into my sidebar here. See “Caught My Eye” under the Recent Comments widget on the right. You can subscribe to an RSS feed of those posts, if you wish. (Click the RSS icon at the bottom of the list, which at this moment contains a single link.)

As I said in the combox the other day, most of what I shared via Reader was different in tone and content from the more newsy links I share via G+, Twitter, Facebook.

I frequently Reader-share posts I find moving, lovely, heartwarming, funny, or thought-provoking—vs. the more informational, newsy link-sharing I do via other platforms. My Reader shares are from blogs I subscribe to & read regularly (stating the obvious, I know). Somehow it feels different to carry a link to FB, Twitter, or G+ and post it: more official, formal, thrusting the post into your stream if you follow me on the platform in question. Whereas with Reader Share, you come to it or follow it only if you *want* that content. Also, those other outlets are so very *public.* If [a friend with a quiet family-focused blog] write[s] a beautiful post I’d like to share, I might be hesitant to do so on G+ where I’m followed by hundreds of people I don’t know—I’ll feel like I’m invading her privacy or something. Sharing via Reader seems more personal.

For now I’m using Feedly to read my blog subscriptions. It has easy sharing to Diigo, Twitter, Facebook, etc. I’ve read that Google may roll out design themes for Reader the way you can get them for Gmail & iGoogle now. If that happens, I may return to Reader for feed-reading.

(Of course now I’m worried about Gmail too. They’re rolling out its redesign soon—you can see what it will look like by clicking the gear icon on your Gmail screen [upper right corner], Mail Settings, Themes. Select the “Preview” theme. More heavy black, excessive white space, ugh ugh ugh. I keep thinking about the design team who undoubtedly worked very hard on the visual elements of this grand Google overhaul—how hard they must have worked & how crushing to have the design met with such resounding disgust all over the internet. Such a bummer.)