For the longest time (since freshman year, early 2007), I’ve been dedicated to Google Reader. I briefly switched to Fever and switched back because the mobile interface wasn’t as functional. Given this whole new Google+ thing, I have less and less confidence of serious, necessary product innovation happening with Google Reader.

How I use Google Reader

Currently, Reeder, an excellent app for both Mac OS X and the iPhone, is my primary interface for Google Reader. It’s lovely, syncs well, and is amazingly integrated with other services. Click a button, choose a service, presto.

I’m subscribed to a total of 568 subscriptions, everything from friends to thought leaders to product blogs to aggregators. Surprisingly, not a lot of mainstream news organizations. My subscriptions are bundled into folders: A-List, B-List, B-High (pretty much Techmeme and Mediagazer), and then by topic (Media & Journalism, WordPress, etc.) or context (friends, Automattic, projects, etc.).

A fair number of people I know have switched away from using an RSS reader in favor of Twitter (example), under the auspices that “if the news is that important, it will find me.” I understand the value of serendipity — I also want to be deliberate about the information I consume. I zero my subscriptions on an almost daily basis.

What a Reader should be

A reader is for engaging with information; it’s a tool for consuming, managing, and using knowledge. In addition to presenting new information to consume, I also want it to pay attention to, infer insights from, and make accessible in an evergreen matter what I’ve already read. For me, this presents the pinnacle of personal information management — an intelligent tool that can reinforce what I already know and help guide me towards what I need to know.

Dave Winer has been thinking about this for much longer than I have — read him first. Basically, unread counts and the rigamarole associated with subscribing to a new feed are the two big deal breakers for RSS readers. In addition to fixing this, I think the new reading interface should:

• Present content based on type. Blog posts should look like blog posts. Quotes shouldn’t look like blog posts… they should look like quotes! Statuses should look like statuses, videos should behave like videos, etc.
• Keep track of what I’ve read and emphasize what’s new to me. Similarly, pay attention to links within pieces of content. If multiple pieces include the same link, nest those together so I can quickly skim the conversation once.
• Offer insights into my information diet. Help me better understand what I’m consuming, how often I’m consuming it, and how I can better improve my consumption patterns.
• Sync states across platforms. It bugs me to no end when I read a Twitter mention on the web and the read state doesn’t persist to the mobile app. If you’re sending email notifications too, the act of reading an email notification should put the web notification should be put in the read state.
• Help me budget my time. Prioritize content when I only have 15 minutes to spare, or I’m at work. I’ve seen some websites show “estimated reading time” — take that further.
• Make it easy to engage with the content. Whether it’s sharing, favoriting, or commenting, let me interact within the reading interface. Reeder does the sharing brilliantly; I pick which services I use and the action is only a tap away.
• Help me remember what I know. I partially use WordPress for this (e.g. useful tools I’ve come across or smart information from Clay Shirky). There’s a certain amount of friction with this approach (both good and bad). It would be awesome if I had a secondary system for quickly accessing information I’ve previously come across. A search engine for information I’ve consumed.

That’s what I’ve got. Let’s start iterating.

It would be neat to pull in responses to or retweets of a publicize action back into the context of the original post. Furthermore, those external reactions should be ingested in a structured manner, and the comments iA should reflect the nature of type of reaction.

This isn’t a new idea as it’s been done before but it’s still something to be vastly improved.

Previously, you could associate multiple email addresses, including Google Apps email addresses, with a single Google Profile. This has been extremely useful, especially for using a product like Google Groups.

Their recent infrastructure change reversed all of this. Specifically, I use danielbachhuber@gmail.com to log into my Google services, but use d@danielbachhuber.com and other email addresses with my Google Groups. Because the Google Apps email addresses can no longer be associated with my primary Gmail account, I can no longer participant in the myriad of Google Groups I’m a part of. Furthermore, I have no idea where else this problem is going to manifest itself.

Google won’t ever get social because they’ve just fundamentally broken the concept of one login for multiple identities and contexts. As strongly as I am against it, this is what Twitter and Facebook are doing right.

Data from the past year

WordPress network usage (as of June 2011)

• 481 total users (students, faculty and staff)
• 272 total websites, including the J-School main site, NYCity News Service, and dozens of class and personal websites
• 70 websites using custom domains (e.g. carmeldelshad.com or nycitynewsservice.com) for unique branding
• 144 personal websites, 43 course websites, and 66 project/publication websites

journalism.cuny.edu analytics (excluding internal IP addresses, June 2010 to June 2011)

• June 2010: 11,201 visits; 32,663 pageviews; 48.03% new visits
• July 2010: 12,317 visits; 36,532 pageviews; 46.16% new visits
• August 2010: 16,027 visits; 42,285 pageviews; 42.85% new visits
• September 2010: 20,159 visits; 55,424 pageviews; 36.60% new visits
• October 2010: 21,441 visits; 57,169 pageviews; 35.49% new visits
• November 2010: 21,557 visits; 58,810 pageviews; 37.97% new visits
• December 2010: 21,221 visits; 54,025 pageviews; 34.76% new visits
• January 2010: 21,422 visits; 55,357 pageviews; 40.26% new visits
• February 2010: 15,961 visits; 41,590 pageviews; 39.59% new visits
• March 2010: 20,055 visits; 53,755 pageviews; 43.45% new visits
• April 2010: 17,517 visits; 45,411 pageviews; 39.49% new visits
• May 2010: 16,439 visits; 42,805 pageviews; 42.53% new visits

Our Facebook Page (June 2010 to June 2011):

• 128 daily active users to 425 daily active users
• 521 total likes to 745 total likes

Our Twitter account (April 2009 to June 2011, according to Twitaholic)

• 758 followers to 2,490 followers
• 224 updates to 1,083 updates

Our videos on Vimeo (June 2010 to June 2011)

• 328,103 total loads
• 8,231 total plays
• 201 total videos
• Embedded on a total of 226 websites
• Top three videos: Sony PD-170 Tutorial (3,089 views), An Evening with Shepard Smith, Fox News Channel – May 25, 2011 (970 views), and Entrepreneurial Journalism Information Session with Jeff Jarvis and Jeremy Caplan (862 views)

Takeaways and next steps

As with any metrics, it’s hard to find the signal in the noise. Furthermore, data can be misleading if you don’t use it in controlled environments.

With that being said, I was quite surprised to see our top-ranking video on Vimeo a pretty generic camera tutorial. This is something to consider for the future. Also, I’m quite happy we have 144 students, alumni and faculty set up with personal websites, and 70 personal and project sites using custom domains.

By this Wednesday, I’m supposed to have a plan together as to what metrics and goals we’ll track for the next year. Post to come.

One, an increasing number of sites now use Facebook and/or Twitter exclusively for their user authentication. In this context, having a corporate-controlled ID is unfortunately better than having no ID. Two, at work I’ve had to ask other people to do tasks I should be doing and I’m done feeling weird about that.

This little ol’ weblog is still my preferred publishing residence and that won’t change anytime soon.

Why did Twitter suspend UberTwitter? Bill Gross, CEO of UberMedia, gives the background of why Twitter suspended UberTwitter, UberCurrent, and Twidroyd. Ruh oh, time to watch out for the gulag.

(via Andrew Spittle)