I’ve wanted this forever. Google Reader just added a feature where you can send items directly to Twitter, Reddit, and a bunch of other places:
To enable it, click on “Settings” in Google Reader and then click on the “Send To” tab to choose which services to add. Note: make sure you disable pop-up blocking so that Google Reader can pop-up a new window on twitter.com (or wherever) to share your item. You can even add custom services:
Suppose I subscribed to a bunch of different blogs, or subscribed to the Twitter feeds of a bunch of people. I could make a custom link that sent individual items to (say) a custom web service that I wrote. For example, any time I saw someone report a Google bug, I could send that to a web service that might let appropriate people triage or vote on that bug. I love the flexibility behind this feature. Thanks to the Google Reader team for adding it!
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Excellent! Going to set it up now. This will be cool even though my Reader likes and shares go to my FriendFeed acct which, in turn posts to Twitter, but only selectively. If you absolutely need something to go to Twitter for sure, this will fix the problem. Thanks for the update Matt.
Very nice – was just playing with this earlier. Wish the ’send to’s were available on the mobile reader; I do much of my RSS reading from my phone.
Can i not integrate my bit.ly account with this for tracking purposes?
I love the new features too Matt! Already created a custom link for supr. It allows me to send a link to both Facebook and Twitter with one click in addition to all of supr’s great features.
Tell the team to keep up the great work!
Now that really opens many possibilities in a lot of ways. I’m starting to see opportunities for this feauture, however I aslo see how this could potentially be a source of abuse.
Thanks for keep us posted.
You going to be at local search summit after #sessj?
Thanks for that power user tip. I used to use Bloglines years ago and while I am sorry that it is slipping away, I am glad Google is coming up with features like this.
I use Google Reader quite a bit and this will save me a tremendous amount of time! The innovations for Google Reader are getting better and better all of the time! Before we know it, it will be a full blown social network! Will Orkut just be rolled into it somehow?
Just implemented. I’m gonna love this!
Nice… G reader is one of these killer app for the iPhone and they are becoming more and more useful. Good job!
Thanks Matt and the Google Reader team for the feature!
Suggestion: Change Send To to be easier to use. Rationale – currently it takes too much time to send Shares to multiple services. In my case, Facebook and Twitter.
Here is what I think that could improve things:
1. Use a modal or popup
2. Add a checkbox beside each service selected via Settings
3. Add a Send and Cancel button.
4. After person checks the service(s) to send to and clicks Send, automatically send to the selected services. Not sure about this one because I’m not sure what data is sent to each of the services, i.e. Delicious
What do you think?
Thanks,
@DragonI
i have started using google reader and i think its a very nice but i think my fav feature of reader is the ability to share items it will be cool to be able to send out the news i like straight from reader and not have to tab over to twitter
IE6 does indeed need to die.
I want this in the mobile version
It would be really nice if Google adds a field ${selected-text} (the text currently selected in the article) to create a custom link. Often the title, url of the article is not sufficient for sharing in twitter. I quote some text from the article usually.
Just a little note for the people who have set up google reader in dutch:
You will need to change your language settings to ‘english’ or you will not see the ’send to’ tab under settings.
There is a reason why I wont use tools like this – because I am nosey!
I prefer to use bit.ly for my url shortening on Twitter, but also like to track the traffic easily and hence will copy/paste the url into the website directly.
(yes, I know I can see stats for any link, but I like the single page for logged in users)
Now, if bit.ly (etc), and Google were to be able to link the shortened urls to the user account, then I would be a happy chappy.
That’s pretty cool. I can bet you’ve always wanted to tweet that specific piece of story you used in your photo as well
Ohh… it opens new page :/. That’s a killer. How about it saves our Facebook and Twitter credentials instead and post directly?
Thanks Matt for sharing this. I am stoked about the custom link feature. I just created a web app that lets me share to posterous, tip to @techmeme, send to twitter with various prefixes like ‘Liked’, ‘Reading’, ‘Share’ etc. I posted about it here http://bit.ly/rpWn6
Yay! Google Reader gets better again. Why anyone would use any other Reader is beyond me. I can log onto any computer in the world and read my favourite sites with loads of functionality!
Nice tip. I’m going to check it out now.
Personally I use Feedly. Which is a plugin for Firefox that builds on Google Reader, it has sharing options and much more. Plus the layout is friendlier and loads faster.
Great feature, which will hopefully get me back into recommending more blogs etc with Stumbleupon and Delicious, which I’ve not been utilising as much as I should.
Only one problem – please, please, please get them to move where the ‘Send To’ option appears on the bar below an article – I keep hitting instead of ‘Edit Tag’s, which is my most used button (Pretty much every article…).
One more great service. Actually I was not using Google Reader but after reading this post I come to know about that and its really interesting.
I think Matt there are still so many stuff I need to know.
Thanks Matt, we all need to share what we know that works best with others and whilst it may be true that few people understand the performances of Google Reader, perhaps when they become aware of this added feature, they’ll start using it more.
Great Job!!! But I suggest doing it also to Google Reader for Mobile.
I usually read posts with a coffee while I’m waiting the train, bus, taxi…. is when I have some time. The other upgrade will be to “Send To” my Docs from APP.
Best Regards!
How would you use this to send items to your linked in account?
Great feature! Is there any way to include the summary or description in a custom link?
Anyone figure out the XML-RPC call to wordpress to use this Google Reader Send To Feature?
I tried it, and I wish it would just allow me to click it without all the time required to pop-up a window, then type. Too many clicks to be really, really useful.
This is great news for those of us who use Google Reader as part of our reputation monitoring suite. Thanks!
Heather
Hey Matt, you post gave me the idea of adding Instapaper to Google Reader with the Send To links.
If interested, here is my walkthrough: http://www.willw.net/adding-send-to-instapaper-into-google-reader/
Wow this is a pretty awesome feature! I am surprised LinkedIN did not make the list…
Ha! I love that the example blog entry is about the move to ditch IE6. Now *that’s* an article worth sharing…
Great. Now I will spend 15 minutes trying to figure out how to send the bookmark to Google Bookmarks, which is not on the list. Maybe that’s telling me something.
This will be helpful, while at the same time, fill Twitter a bunch more tweets. I think we’re over tweeted these days, actually.
No one can read it all … and if they are … they’re not making money.
But, thanks for this tip, it really can be beneficial.
Mark
Great new feature Google! And where can I get in on some of that IE6 action.
Great feature! When I send to twitter, a bitly link is created. Whose link is this and can I set it up to use my own personal bitly account?
Thanks,
Tim
tried to use same urls on vbulletin social bookmarking.. failed !
Brilliant. Maybe even awesome enough for me to consider looking at Reader again.
Wow ! I want to thank you Matt for this valuable info…
I will try it out immediately,
This is great! But in Safari on my mac I get a pop up blocker warning and keeps the feature from working. That’s kind of lame. I don’t want to turn off the pop up blocker to have to use this. Other websites can do pop ups just fine in Safari so it’s something I’d love to see fixed.
Other than that this is kick ass.
Pretty nice, Thanks!
BUT, you should make this visible somehow when unconfigured (like put the Sent To button redirecting to settings) or users won’t realize this exists. And it could go next to the Email and Share buttons.
Thanks!
Only available in the english version ? In the french, the “send it’ tab does not appear.
I´ve got Google Reader in swedish and I don´t have this “send to” tab. Maybe it has not yet been implemented in the swedish edition of google Reader (?).
I’ve used Reader for quite some time now, and it just keeps getting better. Great to see that Google has added this feature.
I am using the send to feature to post stuff on Twitter. Does anyone now how to make a tag in the settings to display a “note” in the tweet? By note I mean when I click “share with note” and input a note.
Is there any way to have Google Reader automatically “send to” a destination every RSS post in a folder as it comes in, rather than manually intervening?
I implemented a Campfire REST API (with Sinatra) mostly so I could do Send to Campfire. It’s at http://github.com/troy/webhook-pirate
matt if your reading this i transcribed your youtube video
google easter eggs
I want this on the mobile version something fierce!
Is there any way to get this to work with vBulletin sites?