Want to Read the Entire Internet?
Dave Metz
Issue date: 11/17/09 Section: Voices
The internet is growing at a rate of several billion pages per day. Frankly, it's daunting - how is a busy business school student to keep up with all the news she wants to read? This is a public service announcement for Google Reader.
In 20 minutes today, I learned:
Newborn babies cry with their mother's accent.
Apple is planning to launch a Verizon iPhone in Q3 2010.
It is more environmentally damaging to own a large dog than to own a Toyota Land Cruiser.
The health care reform bill recently passed in the House contains an amendment that prohibits governmental health plans to subsidize or cover abortion treatments.
A major pollster, Strategic Vision, has been fabricating its polls for, perhaps, forever.
The beauty of Google Reader is that I learned all of these things from one source. I could have read about some of these in the New York Times, perhaps, and some others in the Wall St. Journal, maybe. But I couldn't have read all of these in one location. Google Reader lets you do that. Subscribe to all of your favorite news publications - Freakonomics Blog, Slate, The Financial Times, whatever - and you'll have one place where you can read all of these individual "feeds." The content is organized by feed and is listed by recency. It appears with a headline and often with short blurbs from the article. If you want to read more, click the article. If it's not interesting, scroll by and it gets marked as read, never to be seen again. If it's interesting but you don't have time to give it your attention now, just mark it as unread and read it later.
Google Reader truly excels in the realm of the social. Many people have a GMail account these days, and if you are chat "friends" then you are Google Reader friends as well. What does that mean? Whenever you share an article you enjoy, all of your friends can see it, and conversely you'll see all of their article shares. I don't have time to read the Financial Times daily, but my buddy Tommy will share the most jarring articles from the day's paper. Similarly, my friend Ben will share articles from Bites, NYTimes' tech blog, another site I can't seem to create time for. But Ben and Tommy don't just read a lot, they know lots of other people too. They see all their friends' shares and they share those also. Inevitably, with all the sharing and diversity of connections, the very best of the internet percolates through those daunting billions of pages.
So join Google Reader and keep tabs on everything you're interested in while also being hooked into all of your friends and the internet at large. But don't forget to follow me on Reader - I want to see your shares too.
In 20 minutes today, I learned:
Newborn babies cry with their mother's accent.
Apple is planning to launch a Verizon iPhone in Q3 2010.
It is more environmentally damaging to own a large dog than to own a Toyota Land Cruiser.
The health care reform bill recently passed in the House contains an amendment that prohibits governmental health plans to subsidize or cover abortion treatments.
A major pollster, Strategic Vision, has been fabricating its polls for, perhaps, forever.
The beauty of Google Reader is that I learned all of these things from one source. I could have read about some of these in the New York Times, perhaps, and some others in the Wall St. Journal, maybe. But I couldn't have read all of these in one location. Google Reader lets you do that. Subscribe to all of your favorite news publications - Freakonomics Blog, Slate, The Financial Times, whatever - and you'll have one place where you can read all of these individual "feeds." The content is organized by feed and is listed by recency. It appears with a headline and often with short blurbs from the article. If you want to read more, click the article. If it's not interesting, scroll by and it gets marked as read, never to be seen again. If it's interesting but you don't have time to give it your attention now, just mark it as unread and read it later.
Google Reader truly excels in the realm of the social. Many people have a GMail account these days, and if you are chat "friends" then you are Google Reader friends as well. What does that mean? Whenever you share an article you enjoy, all of your friends can see it, and conversely you'll see all of their article shares. I don't have time to read the Financial Times daily, but my buddy Tommy will share the most jarring articles from the day's paper. Similarly, my friend Ben will share articles from Bites, NYTimes' tech blog, another site I can't seem to create time for. But Ben and Tommy don't just read a lot, they know lots of other people too. They see all their friends' shares and they share those also. Inevitably, with all the sharing and diversity of connections, the very best of the internet percolates through those daunting billions of pages.
So join Google Reader and keep tabs on everything you're interested in while also being hooked into all of your friends and the internet at large. But don't forget to follow me on Reader - I want to see your shares too.
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