Readers may have noticed that in addition to a general hiatus on this blog, the Immanence Shadow Blog (scroll down on the right) also stopped updating several weeks ago. This is because Google Reader, in its recent redesign, eliminated its Shared Items feeds, which means that I can no longer click “Share” on items in my feed reader and have these automatically show up in the Shadow Blog.
Responses to the elimination of this social networking feature on Google Reader seem to have been overwhelmingly negative (see here, here, here, here, here, and here). But Google doesn’t seem to have shown any interest in re-establishing any of it. Instead, they have put their energy into developing and refining Google+, hoping that users will follow them into that uncharted domain. I haven’t done that, and am looking for alternatives. Ideas welcome.
I got hit by this change too (and blogged about it like you did here!). The best workaround I could find (without spending too much time on it) is to use feedly (another blog reader) which links to your google reader shares and maintains the share function (yay!). I also noticed that the google reader app on my smartphone also still has the share function (though that will probably disappear soon). I must say I was mightily pissed off by this.
Google+ seems to be promising.
It worth a try.