This is subtle, but cool news. Google Reader has integrated with GTalk meaning the items you decide to mark as “shared” appear to your friends when they’re using Google Reader.

I pore through scads of feeds in Google Reader on a daily (if not hourly) basis, and whacking anything that I think is cool as “Shared.” Previously these shared news items have shown up on the Webomatica home page or in my Link Sharing series, and I’m thinking about returning them to the sidebar of the blog. Needless to say, the thought of checking articles other people think are cool appeals to me, since I’m already in Reader much of the time.

One slight misstep - as pointed out by Paris Lemon - is that allowing more “friends” to see your shared items is rather opaque. It seems to prefer folks you’ve received multiple emails from or had a GTalk session with.

But this is just one more step in that still-to-be-unveiled Google social networking strategy. This feature-add essentially turns Google Reader into an extremely targeted social news site. And since I’m already a heavy user of many things Google, the barrier to entry is very low.

Additional Reading: WinExtra, Steve Rubel, Googlified, Mashable

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